Harvest time: Share your favorite garden bounty recipes!
My tomato and pepper harvest this year is going to be negligible (thanks, deer!), but I have tomatillos coming out of my ears. My favorite Salsa Verde recipe freezes well.
To the extent that everyone who grows tomatoes will have lots of green ones, here's a good chutney recipe that works well for water-bath canning:
Green Tomato Chutney
Servings: 3 pints
Ingredients:
2 1/2 lbs green tomatoes (a few ripe or partially ripe are fine to be included)
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar, packed
1 cup chopped red onion
1 cup golden raisin
1 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons chopped candied ginger
1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
1 teaspoon chili pepper flakes
1 teaspoon coriander seed
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1/16 teaspoon ground nutmeg
(***For my taste, I'll mince in a couple of whatever fresh hot peppers I have in the garden, and increase other spices to taste, and add a chopped large knob of fresh ginger.)
Directions:
Place all of the ingredients in a medium sized (about 4 qt) thick-bottomed pot. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cover and cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove lid and simmer uncovered for an additional 15 minutes to thicken.
Notes:
Note: If desired, this recipe can be canned by processing filled (sterilized!) jars in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Recipe will fill six 8-oz jars or three 16-oz jars. Otherwise, chutney will keep in the refrigerator for a few months.
The other garden success story this year, heavy rain, weird weather, bugs, and pestiferous ungulates notwithstanding, is basil. Freaking huge bushes of every variety I planted: Italian Mountain, Genovese, Persian, Thai Kaprow, Thai Holy, and Purple Opal.
I'll be processing fresh Italian basil with olive oil and freezing it in silicone trays. Internet rumor has it that freezing doesn't treat fresh garlic well, and you're better off making pesto from frozen basil as needed.
I may do the same thing with neutral oil for the Persian basil, and peanut oil for the Thai, unless someone else has suggestions.
We'll also have about 50 lbs. of apples from a single tree. They're a little too organic for eating out of hand, unless you're comfortable with inadvertent insect protein ingestion. But drying, pies, and cake are definitely in the picture. This is a simple, reliable apple cake recipe that's easy to share around. I'm still digging for my old bakery Caramel Apple Torte recipe.
Thank you for this green tomato recipe! Always looking for ways to use up the end-of-the-year fruits.
We got lucky with tomatoes this year; the deer only nipped the edges, but left the bulk of the plants alone. Our favorite way to process the tomatoes is to roast with onion/garlic (also from the garden, whenever possible), salt/pepper, and a generous amount of olive oil at 325 for about.... 2 hours? It really is depending on preferred caramelization and crispiness. Then to let it cool and put in a tupperware for freezing. We use old to-go soup/curry containers and make sure to squish out all the air, to prevent freezer-burn. These can last in the freezer all winter with minimal degradation and make amazing sauces/soups throughout the winter.
I do basil the same way! I use the food processor to make it into tiny chunks and then squish it into small containers, cover with olive oil (again, to get all the air out and to create a protective coating on top) and freeze. It's really only good for pesto upon thawing, but that's how we use 90% of our basil, anyway, so this means we can get fresh pesto all winter. One thing I found when doing ice cube freezings of basil was there would be an excess of oil. If you save that, it's fantastic for salad dressings and sauteeing!
This is my favorite zucchini bread recipe! By the end of summer, my husband is so sick of zucchini, hiding it is my only option. I prefer savory zucchini breads, and this one is delicious! We also shred and freeze any that doesn't get eaten in time, as it can be used for future breads or soups.
I had so many tomatoes that I for the first time in a very long time got tired of tomato sandwiches. The tomatoes are still blooming and usually do until around mid November. I have a plethora of reaper and scorpion peppers and I don't even like hot peppers. They are beautiful to grow so I like to keep them in the garden. I have cushaw squash coming in now and it's not soup season yet. I also have figs that will be ready soon so there's also those to look forward to.
Our oregano, rosemary and chives live through the winter so they're always in the giving mood. I plant a couple seeds of basil every year and get more than we can ever use. Basil on the pizza, basil in the pesto, basil in the sauces.
My pesto is simple:
basil
olive oil
lemon juice
chives
a handful of cashews
salt and pepper
I'll throw some lemon balm in if I feel adventurous.
I don't use hard measurements so I just toss everything in and give it a whirl in the vitamix.
Toss that up with some of the other veggies in your garden, spread it on roasted tomatoes or just put it on some pasta.
I've never tried pesto with lemon balm! Is there a noticeable difference in flavor? I have lemon balm out my ears every year, and haven't found a good way to use it, yet, but it seems such a waste to just prune it back and compost all the beautiful possibilities. I once tried drying it and using the ground leaves almost like kefir lime, so in curry and tom kha soup, but it didn't really take...
Not who you asked, but I had this same dilemma with lemon balm. This summer I used it to make sun tea, and I freaking loved it. In the past I had tried making a hot tea with it, but the flavor was sort of spinachy to me, not something I'm really looking for in a tea. But the sun tea made awesome iced tea. It was better before it flowered.
Thank you!! This is exactly what I was looking for, and I love sun-tea myself! Did you follow a specific "recipe" or just plunk it into a pitcher and let the sun do the trick on an afternoon?
No recipe. I use a half gallon mason jar, stuff it full of leaves that I pick in the morning, fill to the top with water, add a lid, and let sit in the sun until the following afternoon, occasionally shaking the jar. On super hot and sunny days, I might strain the first evening if too many of the leaves start turning brown, because that changes the flavor, but most of the time that's not a problem here in the pacific northwest. When I strain the water, I've found squeezing the leaves out adds more flavor. Then I put the tea in the fridge to get cold. I don't add sweetener or anything else. What I find interesting about this tea compared to other teas I make is that it's not particularly aromatic, and the taste doesn't hit when it goes in the mouth. It's during and after the swallowing where I sort of smell/taste the crushed leaf fragrance. I find it surprisingly delightful every sip :)
Something I'm going to try next year is making pesto with it, which I learned recently is something people do. I had no idea!
The only thing that really produced for me this year is basil, and I'm going all in with pesto. My ratios are different every time because I just add stuff to taste.
basil
olive oil
walnuts
parmesan cheese
garlic
balsamic vinegar
I have so much basil this year that I looked up if I could freeze pesto. I'm going to go with the method of mixing the olive oil and the basil, and then adding a layer of olive oil on the top and freezing. Then I can add the other ingredients later.
This is how I do my basil and it works beautifully! I heard that freezing complete pesto gets weird because of the parmesan cheese, so I haven't tried it.
I love growing hot peppers, a lot more than I end up eating them. So I usually have a big excess. My go-to recipes are:
Candied jalapeños: https://www.ballmasonjars.com/blog?cid=candied-jalapenos
Red pepper jelly: https://www.ballmasonjars.com/blog?cid=pepper-jelly-recipe
I usually end up water bath canning both recipes so I can give them away as gifts to people throughout the year. For the red pepper jelly, I often don't use bell peppers but just use hot peppers sans seeds/membranes. It has a bit of heat either way, but it's tempered a lot by all the sugar. The candied jalapeños (cowboy candy) have a good heat to them when I use Serranos. Both have been a big hit!
This recipe from Chili Pepper Madness has been my go-to base for using garden hot peppers (in the years I get any...). But I grow Jamaican 7-Pot, Carolina Reaper, Apocalypse Scorpion, etc., so a little goes a very long way. I'll tweak the flavor a bit by roasting half the peppers (well-ventilated room!).
Also, has anyone used pineapple sage for culinary purposes, other than tea? It's gone completely wild and is taking over a garden bed, though frost should knock it back. Pretty red flower spikes when it's blooming, but I have no idea what to do with the leaves.