when life gives you tomatoes

make salsa!

Well, it wasn't life actually, it was my friend's dad.

We've had our first frost already, and for people who do the extreme DIY of food creation and grow their own, that meant emergency harvest of some veggies, and tucking the rest in under a blanket at night.

With no garden, not even a balcony for containers, I am always happy to accept donations of fresh home grown veggies. However, that was a lot of tomatoes, and they were getting pretty ripe, so I decided to use them all up at once. And since I've been craving heat like crazy lately...

Roasted Tomato Salsa

What you need:

• A lovely assortment of fresh ripe tomatoes ... I guess 2 pounds? Maybe 3?
• 5 giant jalapenos
• 1 onion
• 1 whole head of garlic (yes, a whole head)
• 1 lime (2 in the pic, I only used one)
• 1 bunch of cilantro
• oil
• salt

What you gotta do:

I opted to trim the stem parts off the tomatoes. You don't have to if you don't want to.

Preheat your oven to broil and move one of your oven racks up a level or two.

Chop the larger tomatoes in chunks (I did the big ones in quarters and the medium ones in half). Cut the onion into eighths. Cut the stems off the jalapenos, and cut them in half. If you really want to, take out the seeds and whatnot. Peel all the garlics.

Put the garlic, jalapeno, onion and tomatoes into a 9x13 roasting dish.

Drizzle on about 1 tbsp of oil, and toss the veggies in the oil until they're all nicely coated. Use your hands. It's okay. It's only food.

Put the veggies under the broiler.

If you have a decent oven, they should only take 15-20 minutes to be nice and roasty. After that much time, my tiny and apparently weak broiler had started to brown some of the skins, but the onions and jalapenos were still crispy.

I gave everything a stir and popped it back in the oven. It took another 20-25 minutes before everything was getting that nice browned roasty colour and smell.

Time to chop it.

Put the garlic, onion, and jalapenos (I just fished them out with a spoon) into your food processor.

Buzz this up for a few seconds. You don't want it too chopped, but if you don't do this step, by the time the onions and jalapenos are chopped, your tomatoes will be soup.

Drop the tomatoes on top of the pre-chopped stuff.

A few seconds is all it takes.

Now, we need something sour. Roasting the veggies, especially ones with super high sugar contents like onions and tomatoes, caramelizes the sugars and makes everything super sweet. That's where the lime juice comes in. You can use lemon juice or even white vinegar in this step.

This is where you chop and add the cilantro.

You're also going to want a bit of salt. I used about a teaspoon. The amount of salt you add is really dependent on how you plan on eating the salsa. I was planning on scooping it up with chips, so I used a chip as my taster.

If I'd salted the salsa by tasting it on its own, I would have ended up with a much saltier salsa. The salt on the chip makes a big difference.

I got quite a bit of salsa from that little portion of the emergency harvest.

The small containers went into the freezer since I'm not a canner. And a nice big bowl of it went onto my desk with some chips. And now there is cilantro on my statistics homework.

How did your garden grow?

you almost need to make it twice

Why? Because it cooks so fast you can't believe you actually made dinner.

I'm afraid that right now, as I type this, it's late, my brain is a little fried and I'm not entirley convinced I can even explain a recipe as simple as this one.

So, that's about all the preamble you get, and I make no promises that I will meet my weekly quota of almost dirty jokes, innuendo, entendre, or fucks.

Pork and Bok Choy Stir Fry

Really, the name says it all.

What you need:

• 1/2 lb ground pork
• 1/4 of a small onion
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 2 cloves garlic
• an inch or so of ginger
• 1 tbsp peanut oil
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• big bag of baby bok choy
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp water
• sesame seeds and green onion to make it pretty

What you gotta do:

In a bigger bowl than you think you need, combine the first 7 ingredients (pork, onion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, cornstarch).

Dice the onion, mince the garlic, and grate the ginger first though...

You just did about half the work on this dish.

While that rests and marinates, dump all your mini bok choys into a sink full of cold water.

A quick bath this way will get rid of any residual dirt caught between the stalks. Trim the ends off and separate the leaves.

Those of you familiar with romance epublishing will totally recognize the Samhain Publishing logo.

 Totally looks like bok choy.

Drain most of the water off your little leaves, and set them aside while you start cooking.

Heat the peanut oil in a large pan over medium high heat. When it's hot enough that you want to start cooking in it, add the sesame oil.

Peanut oil can take the high heat needed for a stirfry, but sesame oil can't. Adding the sesame to the peanut helps protect it from burning in the 30 seconds it takes for you to get the pork in the pan.

Quick!

Don't worry, it won't burn in 30 seconds or anything.

But the pork cooks damn quick. You barely get it into the pan and it's done.

Once the pink is gone and you're thinking it's gotta be done (which takes all but 5 minutes, if that) drop in your still-damp bok choy.

This is why you needed a large pan. Greens like these start out big and wilt down to nothing in no time. Cover the pan and let them steam for 3-4 minutes.

I'm really starting to think I should have timed this one. I'll bet it's another one that can be done in less than 20 minutes.

The bok choy aren't entirly done yet, no, but it's only a couple minutes now.

In a small lidded container, shake up the last 3 ingredients (water, soy sauce, cornstarch), and pour them into the pan.

A bit of sriracha hot sauce would totally be awesome mixed in here, but I'm still working my kid up to hot chili sauce, so I refained.

In the time it takes for the sauce to thicken, the bok choy will finish cooking.

Serve on rice (leftover rice would make this one of the fastest dinners ever) or noodles.

I sprinkled mine with a little green onion and toasted sesame seeds. Lately I've been wanting toasted sesame seeds on everything and I'm trying to work out a cookie recipe that includes them.

I know a lot of people think stirfry has to be at least 8 kinds of vegetables and takes hours of chopping before hand, but really, it can be as simple as this. When I worked at a small town family owned Chinese restaurant, this is what I ate for dinner late at night with my employers. Home cooked family food. "Dinner for 4".

What do you like to order for take out?

Update on Monday, August 20, 2012 at 11:33PM by Seeley deBorn

Okay, two things:

1) once again I have totally unintentionally copied Taneasha... a fast and easy dinner of ground meat, green things, and rice. Dude. I don't know how I keep doing this!

2) I have no idea why there's a lime in the ingredients pic.