Green tomato relish

Hello foodies,

Here we are, the last weekend in September.  I have given my tomatoes all the time I am going to give them.  This morning, I went out and harvested everything that was either fully green or fully ripe.  There are a few left in the midst of ripening, and taking all the green fruit away will help with that - the plant can direct its flagging energy to finishing off the remaining fruit.

In preparation for making the relish, I have been researching recipes and methods.  Many recipes had cabbage in them.  Very few had garlic.  All had green tomatoes, bell peppers, and onions and vinegar as central ingredients, and most also had sugar, but the flavour profile beyond that seems rather flexible.  Ultimately, my reading led me to an understanding of the ratios of sugar, vinegar and salt needed, and my own preferences led me to develop my own flavour profile.  Thus, I am confident in saying this is my very own green tomato relish!

So, my recipe:

12 green tomatoes, chopped into 1-2 cm pieces
2 green peppers, chopped into 1-2 cm pieces
1 jalapeno pepper, cut into thin rings - with seeds
1 little tiny HOT pepper of your choice, also with seeds - I used a green Thai chili.
4 medium red onions, diced - the dice is smaller than the chop on the tomatoes and onions
1 head of garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 c white sugar
3/4 c cider vinegar
40 grams of pickling spice blend
1.5 tbsp salt
extra mustard seeds and celery seed to taste

 

Some recipes call for letting the chopped veg drain for an hour, or adding the vegetables to a simmering vinegar/spice/sugar solution.  I find all of that too fancy.  I just put it all in a big pot, mixed it about, put it on medium-high heat, and let it go.  Once it was simmering, I lowered the heat to a little over medium and let it go 20-25 minutes or so.  I didn't want to completely lose the structural integrity of the vegetables, but I wanted the rawness of the onion and garlic to cook out.  I sampled some, and found I like the flavour balance, and made the executive decision it was time to can.  Here is what it looked like after the cooking process:

 

Now, for safe food preservation, the jars and rings have to be sterilized, meaning boiled, completely submerged in water, for 10 minutes.  Some websites say that jars can be sterilized in the dishwasher or oven.  I don't trust this.  I placed a sushi mat at the bottom of my stock pot, arranged the jars and rings in the pot, poured hot water from the tap over until the jars were completely submerged, and then turned on the heat, bringing it to a boil.  The sushi mat is so the jars aren't in direct contact with the pot, which reduced the chance of breakage.  After the jars and rings had boiled long enough, I turned off the heat, and added the lids.  The adhesive strip around the lids can be damaged in water that is fully boiling.  This sterilization process was happening while I was chopping.  I left the jars in the water until I was finished cooking the vegetables. 

Using a funnel, I scooped simmering, bubbling relish into the sterile jars, wiped the edges, placed the lid, and tightened.  As I continued, I heard the already filled jars pop, meaning the seal was made, the button on the lid was down.   If you press the centre of the lid, it does not move at all.  Many recipes call for the full jars to be boiled for 10 minutes to set the seal, but my research (and family practice) has found that where you're putting boiling food into sterile jars, this is unnecessary.  Once the jars pop, you're able to tighten the rings further.  Properly canned and sealed preserves will keep 2-5 years.  When opening a jar, if the lid is rusted it is no longer good.

So, at the end of the day, I have nine 250 ml jars of green tomato relish, and one little tupperware container to use immediately.  The flavour is sweet and spicy, with a vinegary, mustardy tang.  The jalapeno and Thai chili bring a nice heat at the end.  I look forward to using this as a condiment with chicken and pork dishes, particularly, but it will also work with beef - especially on a burger, or a meatloaf sandwich.

 

All in all, my first summer of growing tomatoes has been mostly a success (there was that one plant that didn't produce anything).  I learned what I need to do to maximize production and facilitate ripening, so next year, I can manage my plants better from the start.  A small tomato crop is my new summer tradition.

Next adventure:  salmon gravlax, currently curing in the fridge.  Look for  a post on how it turns out on Tuesday or Wednesday.

For updates, follow me on twitter!  @culinarykira

Roasted Tomatoes

Hello foodies,

I am deep in the grips of an awful head cold.  Most of the last 36 hours I have been curled up, feeling sorry for myself.  But today, I had to acknowledge one universal truth: ripe tomatoes wait for no woman.

All of my earlier angst about tomatoes not ripening seems to have been wasted.  I have ripe tomatoes - all that I can handle.  I am now worrying I won't have enough green ones left to be worth attempting to make and can relish.  Looking at the 5 little beauties on my counter today, I knew I had to do something with them.  Sure, I could make yet another caprese salad, but where is the fun in that?  And a caprese salad wouldn't take care of 5 tomatoes.  I needed something that would solve the immediate problem of lunch, and the longer term problem of using 5 tomatoes.  My solution:  roasting.

Roasting carmelizes the sugars and intensifies and concentrates that sweet acidity that make tomatoes such a jewel of a fruit.  Roasting extends the life of the tomato, giving you more time to enjoy your garden bounty.  Roast tomatoes keep about a week in the fridge (and unlike fresh tomatoes, the fridge doesn't ruin their texture and flavour), or they can be frozen.  They are great in sandwiches - intense tomato flavour without the bread getting soggy.  A simple pasta served with olive oil, garlic, and a few sliced roasted tomatoes is a very satisfying meal.  A roasted tomato soup has a deeper, more intense flavour.  Etc.  Etc.

Roasting tomatoes isn't hard - prep time, 10 min, cook time, about an hour. 

• Halve (or quarter, if larger) as many tomatoes as you'd like to roast, and remove seeds.
• In a bowl, combine finely chopped garlic, basil, and oregano (or whatever herbs and spices you particularly like with your tomatoes), pepper, and a couple of tbsp of olive oil.
• Toss the tomatoes in the olive oil and spread on a baking sheet.
• Lightly sprinkle with salt.

• Place in the oven.  I roasted them for approximately 1 hr at 350.  You can do a shorter time at a higher temperature (but watch to make sure they don't burn), or a lower temp for longer.
• They're done when they're shrunken and a little shrivelled, and the garlic has softened and sweetened. 

Thanks to all the people who have recently taken an interest in my blog - I hope you keep coming back!  For updates and observations, follow me on twitter:  @culinarykira

Food trucks - My Summer Quest

Hello foodies,

Ottawa is seldom on the leading edge of a food trend.  And food trucks are no different.  Around North America, gourmet food has come to the streets.  Creative, interesting, exciting food.  In Vancouver, they're everywhere, and even high end chefs are in the game - Vikram Vij, one of Canada's premiere chefs, has a truck.  In Calgary, Top Chef Canada season 1 finalist Connie DeSousa also has a truck.  The Food Network has a show, airing multiple times per week, on the subject:  Eat St.  For decades, the only food truck that could be spotted on Ottawa's not-so-mean streets was the ubiquitous chip wagon, dishing out mountains of poutine, along with burgers, dogs, and pogos.  But in the summer of 2013, that all changed.  Ottawa licensed a number of new food trucks and carts, blowing the Ottawa street food scene wide open.

And for me, Culinary Kira, a quest was born.  I set myself the task of trying a number of downtown food trucks to see whether this food trend was worth the hype.  Concurrently, I also started this blog, which now gives me a platform from which to present my findings.  And my final analysis is that there is much hype, much of it undeserved, but there are a gems here and there, and those gems deserve your business.  Quick scoreboard:  Angry Dragonz and Dosa are gems.  Bap, by Raon Kitchen, is worth a try.  Ad Mare and Streat did not impress.

My first effort at finding food truck nirvana was in late May or early June.  I made myself a list of the assigned locations of certain downtown trucks and set off.  I found....   not a single one.  Almost a month after their heralded opening, there was not a truck to be found at its appointed location.  What I later found is that, none of the trucks were ready to roll in late May or early June.  It was more like July when things really got under way.  This was a disappointment.

In July, I made it out to Ad Mare, which, as a fish truck, was the one that most excited me.

The have a great location: downtown, surrounded by office towers.  And while the idea is great, the execution of the idea left something to be desired.  First, the service is SLOW.  When I arrived, I could place my order right away, but I was told it would be 20-25 minutes for the food.  That is about what I would likely wait in a restaurant for my order.  But in a restaurant, I wouldn't be standing on a street corner surrounded by traffic fumes and noises, and I wouldn't be paying a dollar for water.  If there is a line up when you arrive, you may wait 10 or more minutes to order, and then wait 25 minutes for your food.  This is not acceptable.  When there are only three things on the menu on any given day, they should be able to streamline production to the point that they can have food in your hand in under 10 minutes.  I ordered the fish and chips, their signature dish.  I will acknowledge that the fish was very good.  Cooked perfectly, seasoned properly, good batter to fish ratio, batter not overly greasy.  It is among the better pieces of fried fish I have had.  The same cannot be said for the accompaniments.  Coleslaw was bland and soggy.  It screamed out for some sort of tasty dressing.  The tartar sauce was not tart at all.  It was basically just mayo.  I had to search for the relish/pickle that makes a tartar sauce.  I certainly couldn't taste it. The chips were veggie chips, not french fries.  This, in and of itself, is not a problem, though I am sure some would be disappointed.  The problem was that they were very poorly done.  Unevenly cooked - some burned, with a nasty, bitter taste, some underdone, with a starchy, raw taste.  All greasy and unappealing.  I wanted to like Ad Mare, they just made it impossible.

This was not a good omen, but my faith in food trucks was restored in Kingston the next weekend, when the Farm Girl truck delivered tasty, fun food in a reasonable time frame.

 

C and I each ordered something different, and then split each dish.  At the top we have a meatloaf sandwich with fries, and on the bottom, pulled pork sandwich with a nice, fresh salad.  Both sandwiches were awesome, with complex flavours.  Some sweetness, tender meat, fresh greenery.  The fries were excellent, and the salad well dressed.  The Farm Girl experience made me believe it would be worth while continuing with these Ottawa trucks after my first two disappointing outings.

So, in August I again ventured out.  I walked by Streat.  This also has a good location, and I had heard good things.  However, the only menu item was a chili dog.  It isn't that they had run out of other menu items.  This was their only offering.  This struck them off my list.  I am not a fan of chili dogs, and they are something you can get at pretty much every Lou Patate truck in Ottawa, so it was hardly original or inspired. 

So I went to the cart run by Raon Kitchen, Bap.  Here, they basically do one thing, and they do it quite well.  Bibimbap - a nutritionally complete bowl of traditional goodness:  rice, meat, veg.  I opted for the beef bibimbap (they have chicken and tofu, maybe pork, as well), and added kimchi to the dish.  Highly recommend the kimchi addition.  The beef, rice, and veg, on their own, are not super flavourful, so the addition of the sour, fermented cabbage really kicks the flavour up (along with the doctoring from the various sauces at the side of the cart).  I added hot sauce, sesame seeds, and sesame oil to punch up the flavour.  It was filling and satisfying, and the service was fast.  But I still felt there was better to be had.

 

Today I went out again, determined to try Angry Dragonz, and here I found what I have been waiting for - a truly tasty food truck meal that makes me want to return.  I went with their signature dish - the Dragonz bowl.  Fundamentally, this isn't so different than bibimbap, but functionally, it is worlds apart.  Rice, slaw, masago (little red fish eggs commonly found on sushi), three skewers of grilled meat - chicken, beef and lamb - sesame seeds and a drizzle of sauce (to which I added 2 more sauces).  I also added an egg roll.  The dish was pretty.  The colours and composition made me want to eat it.  And when I tasted it....  it was really good.  The meat was well cooked, the slaw (cabbage, carrot, sprouts, scallions) was crunchy and cool, with some vinegary dressing providing the acid that I find I need in almost every dish.  There was crunch, and chew and starch.  Acid and heat, cooling veggies.  Everything that makes a fun dish.  The egg roll was great.  Probably best I have had in Ottawa.  Crisp, hot.  Open ended, and therefore not soggy and slimy inside - I dislike biting into an egg roll and getting a gush of oily water than has come out of the vegetables during cooking.  The menu is fixed, but there are plans to introduce noodle dishes soon.  Service was friendly, and the food was produced in reasonable time (around 5 minutes, a wait I consider quite acceptable, particularly given the quality of food), though I was told the line ups can be pretty big Thursdays and Fridays.  I wanted to try their dessert - the Dragonz Puffs - but I knew there was one other food truck to knock off my list. 

 

Finally, with the end of my quest in sight, I decided to head to Dosa (Somerset and Lyon), which is only a couple of blocks from Angry Dragonz (Lyon and Gloucester).  In a way, Dosa has a great location.  It is right by Dundonald Park, so you can pick up your dosa and head into the park to eat it.  In a way, it isn't the best location, because it is further away from all those downtown office towers that have thousands of people swarming out for lunch every weekday.  This is in a more residential area, and is only a couple of blocks from the start of Chinatown.  I hope today's lack of busy-ness was more a sign of cold Monday-ness (there is a chill wind blowing in Ottawa today), rather than lack of interest, because this place, too, deserves your patronage.

 

Where Angry Dragonz bills itself as Asian fusion, this is traditional Indian.  They do one thing, very well.  There are a variety of filling options, but I went for the traditional masala dosa - a thin, chickpea and lentil crepe, very crispy, stuffed with spiced potatoes and peas, and served with the traditional chutney and sauces, and some plantain chips for additional texture.  I have had masala dosa before, but this is by far the best I've found.  The spicing in the potatoes and chutney were fantastic, and walking back to the bus, my taste buds were a-tingling.  That is what I love about Indian food, it wakes up your mouth and makes it very happy.  They have a number of different fillings I am eager to return to try.

There are quite a few trucks I haven't tried.  I limited myself to the downtown core.  There are several in the west end that sound interesting.  All in all, I hope the food trucks are here to stay.

For updates and observations, follow me on twitter!  @culinarykira

Peach pockets

Hello foodies,

Growing up, dessert was not a regular feature in our house.  My mother, in charge of the cooking, had little interest in sweets, so the daily question, "What's for dessert?" voiced by at least one of us was almost always met with, "Nothing."  We lived with it.  And as adults, none of us have much of a sweet tooth.

However, there were those times of the year when old family recipes were dug up and my mother indulged in her own bit of nostalgia.  Peach pockets, in August, are one of those times.

August is, of course, peach time in Ontario.  The stores are full of freestone peaches, perfectly ripe.  They don't last long.  In addition to my grandmother making peach jam, and freezing peach pies for the winter, at least one Sunday dinner featured peach pockets.  I know, you look at the picture and see what is basically an individual peach pie.  And, fundamentally, it is.  But somehow it is better in pocket form than pie form.  Each pocket is a single whole peach, halved and pitted, with the pit cavity stuffed with a mixture of cinnamon and brown sugar, then wrapped in pie dough and baked until golden.  My theory as to why these are better than a full peach pie is that peaches are a wet and juicy fruit.  In a pie shell, the liquid released during cooking has nowhere to go, contributing to an overly damp interior.  With the pockets, you get a better end result with the crust.  And the crust to fruit ratio is pretty much perfect.

This year, my mother an my niece, M, were visiting me for a week in August.  I trundled off to work every morning, leaving them with a house full of fruit.  Mum took the opportunity to teach M one of the tried and true family treats, and I returned home at the end of the day to the heavenly aroma of sugar, baked peaches, and pie crust.

The basics of pastry are a ratio of 2:1 flour to fat, a healthy pinch of salt, and enough liquid to make it come together in a ball.  Within those basic parameters, there is a lot of room to play - type of fat, type of liquid.  Some people sweeten the crust if it is a sweet pie that is being baked (I don't).  Every baking family (and prior to my mother's generation, my family is certainly a baking family) has a pie crust recipe that they swear is better than all others, but they all basically adhere to those ratios. 

The first step is to mix the flour and salt, and cut in the fat.  A pastry cutter is not necessary.  A pastry cutter may, slightly, speed the job, but it is a unitasker that takes up space in the drawer.  Two knives works well to get it started, and you can switch to a fork once the pieces of fat are smaller.  Work the fat into the flour until it looks crumbly.  The picture below is early in the process; the fats need to be cut up much smaller.

 

On this particular day, the fat was a combination of vegetable shortening and butter.  I have only once tried lard, and I didn't like the result much.  I either go all shortening or a mix.  Butter makes the flavour richer.

 

For liquid, I beat 1 egg with 1 tbsp of vinegar and add to the mix, stir a couple of times, then add cold water 1 tbsp at a time until the dough comes together as you see here.  Very important: KEEP THE MIXING TO A MINIMUM.  The more you work the dough, the tougher it will be because the more the gluten in the flour will develop, becoming long and stringy at the microscopic level, weaving together and forming a dense, fibrous structure.  This is why we knead bread - to develop the gluten, but what makes a lovely bread makes a lousy pie crust.  A note about vinegar - it creates a flakier crust, but it is harder to handle when rolling out.  If you're a pastry novice, I suggest just using water to start, and then when you are getting good pastry results, try it with egg and vinegar.

Roll out on a lightly floured surface, with a floured rolling pin, until it is about 3 mm thick.  Move the dough around, even turn it, to ensure it doesn't stick.  Don't let cracks or tears throw you off (and if you're using egg and vinegar, it is more likely to fall apart at the edges).  There is always extra dough to patch up imperfections, but scrunching it up and rolling it out again develops that rascally gluten.

 

Here we have the dough rolled out and a peach ready to be stuffed with sugar.  The dough round here is, perhaps, a little larger than you need, but you can trim if it is too much; it is hard to stretch if it is too little.

 

Add about a tsp of a the brown sugar/cinnamon mix into the cavity of the peach and then put it back together and wrap and seal in the dough.  Don't wrap too tightly, though.  Place on a baking sheet and slice a vent in the top.  Bake in at 425 for 10 minutes, then lower heat to 350 and bake until golden.

Obviously, this would be good with vanilla ice cream, however, our traditional accompaniment is something we call hard sauce.  Sinful, caloric, and of no nutritional value, it is a mix of butter and icing sugar.  You take soft butter, and work in icing sugar, adding more and more sugar, until, basically, the butter won't accept any more.  What you have is similar to a hard, stiff icing.  A little piece of the sauce with each bite of peach pocket works beautifully, because the almost too-sweet sauce brings out the acidity found in any fruit.  Each mouthful combines the soft, yielding, sweet peaches with the hint of tartness at the end, with the crisp, flaky pastry that almost melts in your mouth. 

Thanks to niece M for her baking, and her photography, and to mum for walking M through the process and extending peach pocket delight to another generation.

For updates, follow me on twitter!  @culinarykira

Harvest

Hello foodies!

Short post tonight.

The little tomato plants that could have ripe produce.  In is harvest time!

Now I am in need of things to do with tomatoes, because there are plenty more coming.  It seems to me a could have planned this a bit better, but, oh well.

Last weekend, my mother called to pick my brain to get ideas for a salad involving lobster.  Off the top of my head, I suspected corn would go well, and quickly googled some ideas.  Thanks for a website called Skinny Taste, I found a gorgeous tomato, corn, and lobster salad, and this was actually the first salad I made with my own tomatoes. 

 

The pics on the website are a tad more professional, but this is what mine looked like.  I tend to go heavy on the pepper because, well, I love pepper.  The acidity of the tomatoes and hint of onion brought by the chives played well with the sweet lobster and corn.  This salad would work with crab or shrimp as well. 

I also discovered later in the weekend when I finally made my long desired caprese salad that corn is a nice addition to that as well, which made that a vegetarian variation on the lobster salad: more tomatoes, balsamic vinegar instead of lemon juice, basil instead of chives, plus bocconcini cheese.  Still lots of pepper.  The point is, corn and tomato are a nice pairing.  Isn't it convenient that they peak at the same time?

Some other things I am planning with my tomatoes:

• tomato and corn bruschetta with home made ricotta
• canning stewed red tomatoes for winter
• making and canning green tomato pickle with any fruit that doesn't ripen.
• salads, salads and more salads

I do not anticipate tiring of my bounty.

For updates, follow me on twitter!  @culinarykira