Monday, August 10, 2009

Blog back on: Tomatillo Processing

Does anybody remember the Guns N Roses song with the lyrics, "I used to love her, but I had to kill her."? Well that's exactly how I feel about the tomatillo plant so prominently displayed in the top picture there, all gangly and getting in the way of the cream sausage and classic roma tomatoes. Thus over the weekend, the tomatillo was sacrificed for the greater garden good. It hurt me to do so, but more importantly what was I to do with the 9 lbs of tomatillos? Duh, canning.

I admit I make a pretty mean escabeche with my jalapenos. But this is my first year with the tomatillos and subsequently my first year canning them. I read every recipe I could find on Google (which they also seem to be the same recipe +/- cilantro, and/or +/- some random dry spice), and proceeded on Saturday's day long task. Washing the jars, washing the veggies, chopping the veggies (second time around I used the food processor), boiling down the tomatillos/brine, keeping the jars/lids hot, filling the jars, wiping down the jars, cooking with 15 lbs of pressure, etc. All in all, 9 lbs of tomatillos, plus 4 cups onions, plus 4 cups jalapenos yielded 7.5 pints of salsa.

I also made some Cleveland Brown colored spaghetti sauce for the winter with all the variety colored heirlooms. Unfortunately, Cleveland Brown is akin to puke-orange and that's what happens when you make sauce with red, white, orange, yellow, purple, and green tomatoes. Sarah, this evening, made pa amb tomaquet (spelled correctly) with our white tomatoes. They looked like apple sauce all grated. Anyways, it was amazing with some of the mellowest tomatoes ever. I still got the garlic funk going on.

I'll have another tomatillo processing blog coming up with a "neat" pictorial of the seed saving process. At this point and at this rate, I think I have enough seeds to last a lifetime.

No comments:

Post a Comment