Staying On Karma's Good Side

A farmer's life must be a dramatic one. Although they are portrayed as calm and jovial in storybooks, except for Mr. MacGreggor who found Peter Rabbit so vexing, farmers must be a very stressed out bunch given all the variables poised to undermine the crops. Every waking hour the farmer must have at least of modicum of worry over pestilence, bad weather, and falling market prices. And should good conditions prevail, and the farmer reap a bountiful harvest, with that blessing comes hours of work to bring the crop in and process it in some way.

This summer, we co-existed with a mouse or two, but we otherwise experienced a convergence of good conditions, because we're still hauling in weekly mounds of tomatoes from Dennis's back yard crop. Naturally, I should be grateful for the endless bounty, and I am, of course. But my thankful spirit doesn't really assuage the demands of processing all those red-fleshed spheres. And unlike other chores, which one can procrastinate about forever (like cleaning the closet), tomatoes do not have an infinite shelf life. You have to act, or they will eventually turn to tomato mush. Consider this: If I allow produce grown on my own little patch of dirt to turn into tomato rot, then what have I reaped. Inaction here must be a karma train wreck, given all the starving children in the world who have neither California sunshine nor a little plot of land to tend. But still, I don't recall signing on to be a farmer's wife. Where was that clause in the marriage contract?

Anyway, for the past few days, I've been processing this year's tomato production, and I am more than ready to move on to another crop. When cooking fresh tomatoes, it's all about skins and seeds. Skin them? Seed them? Skin them, but leave the seeds? Vice versa? Or don't worry about any of it. Thanks to Cuisinart, you can go a long way toward knocking down the skin-seed dilemma without too much trouble. If you find yourself with an overabundance of tomatoes, here are a couple of ways to go: One is a lovely tomato soup, which is actually bruschetta in a pot. The other direction is to make a tomato puree, which will keep in the freezer and serve as a base for any number of pasta sauces in the months ahead.

Tomato-Bread Soup

This soup is the end result of a moment earlier in the summer when Dennis chopped up a massive bowl of tomatoes and I added some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic and basil to serve on some slices of good bread. A few days later, we still had some tomato mixture and some hard bread, so in trying not to be wasteful, this soup emerged.

2-3 tbsp olive oil
1 lg clove garlic, crushed
about 2 dozen medium-sized tomatoes, quartered with seeds removed (but don't worry if some seeds slip by you)
12 basil leaves
4-5 stems of Italian parsley
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 baguette or several slices of good-quality bread, crusts removed and torn into large chunks
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp balsamic or sherry vinegar (optional)
cracked pepper

Heat olive oil and garlic in a large, heavy bottom soup pot with lid. When garlic is lightly browned, add tomatoes. Heat tomatoes until they are bubbling lightly, then cover partially with lid askew, and cook for about 1 hour over a low flame. Check periodically to stir and make sure tomatoes are not boiling. (In my book, letting tomatoes bubble rapidly is generally a bad idea, so do this at your own peril.) If left to cook at a leisurely pace, the tomatoes will eventually break down and the skins will start to separate. When you get to this point, let the mixture cool a bit and then pour it into a blender or food processor, along with the basil and parsley. Puree until tomato chunks disappear and you don't see any tomato skins floating about. Return puree to the pan, add the chicken stock and the bread. Simmer on low for about 20 minutes, then taste. If the soup has too much of an acid flavor, add some sugar to mellow it out. Or if you want the soup to have more zip, add the vinegar. Makes about 6 cups.

Tomato Puree

Follow the recipe above until the puree step. You can puree the cooked tomatoes without adding the fresh herbs, pour the mixture into containers, and freeze for a rainy day. I can foresee pasta sauces with porcini mushrooms, or little shrimps, or ground beef or whatever you like.

Buon Appetito. Oh, and feel free to stop by any time and take some tomatoes off my hands. I'd just like them to go to a good home, where they'll be appreciated and respected, and dealt with before they become a biology experiment. After all, I have my karma to consider.