Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!

Oh, so many tomatoes. Little Shop of Horrors in the raised beds. Too much temptation at the farmers' market in early spring with too many varieties. Eleven tomato plants later in early September, I'm picking a growing number of pounds. Every day.

Orange, red, and black cherry tomatoes. Red and yellow grape tomatoes. Heirloom yellow tomatoes. Black Prince (which is a little slower to come on but was an incredible producer for me last year). A fun pink and green striped "tie-dyed" tomato named Pink Berkeley, also slower to produce and one of those that grows a somewhat lobed, lumpy tomato that makes for funny slices. San Marzano and some other kind of Roma/paste tomato. 

At one point after I'd missed picking three days in a row due to workshops and a conference out of town I picked 14 pounds: a giant bowl of all the small ones, a big colander of the big ones.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.

Thanks to Food in Jars I knew not to double any recipes that involve cooking them to a jammy quality. Tomatoes take a long time to cook down, and the juicier they are the longer it takes. Since I have a lot of cherry tomatoes in my mix I have a lot of juice. The most I did was scale up by about a pound, adjusting other elements accordingly. 

I cook in my widest deep saucepan for maximum surface exposure to cook off the juice, or in a new Lodge Dutch oven I sprang for that's now possibly my favorite pot. Hot tomatoes really spit so even though it's tempting to crank up the heat for a fast boil I don't leave it at a full boil. I ramp it up (7 on my induction cooktop, which tops out at 9), then turn back to 6 or even 5.

Recipe #1: Smoky, Spicy, Skillet Tomato Jam by Food in Jars. I tend to hold back on the heat so I didn't put in as much as it called for in crushed red pepper and I substituted Aleppo pepper for the cayenne. Still very tasty.

Recipe #2: Tomato Jam by Serious Eats. The most popular recipe on her site, a sweet and savory version. Sort of ketchup-y in its flavor profile.

Recipe #3: Orange Tomato Jam with Smoked Paprika. To my disappointment (and that of other commenters) "orange" didn't mean a tomato/citrus jam. It meant jam made with orange tomatoes, which are lower in acid than red varieties so the recipe is adjusted accordingly. I had plenty of orange cherry, yellow grape, and yellow heirloom after about three days' picking so I made this. For the record, all tomatoes darken as they cook down so it's sort of a smoky dark orange.

Recipe #4: I wanted that citrus! So I mashed up a couple of recipes and went for spices that sounded good when I tasted them in my head. My sources:

• Tomato Marmalade Recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation
• Tomato Orange Marmalade Recipe from Epicurious
• Tomato Citrus Jam Recipe from Simply Gourmet

Tomato Citrus Marmalade

• Tomatoes: Around 4-1/2 lbs.
• Oranges: 2, cut into eighths, seeds removed, and very thinly sliced, peel and all
• Lemon: 1, cut into eighths, seeds removed, and very thinly sliced, peel and all
• Sugar: 4 cups (too much!)*
• Salt: 1 t.
• Cinnamon: 1 t. to start; added 1/2 t. toward end
• Ginger: 1 t. to start; added 1/2 t. toward end
• Allspice: 3/4 t.
• Coriander: 1/4 t. (could leave this out if you don't like the flavor)
• Mace: 1/4 t. ( could use nutmeg too, or instead)
• Aleppo pepper: Added 1/2 t. toward the end when I tasted

*This was too sweet! I wish I had started out with 2-1/2 or 3 cups of sugar instead of 4. When I tasted at the end after it had thickened up and concentrated the flavors, the citrus was strong but so was the sugar. I know it's needed for the set but not all the Food in Jars recipes use a sugar ratio that's this high.

So I adjusted. I added more cinnamon and ginger, and some Aleppo pepper for a smokeyish heat.

Still too sweet. I opened my spice drawer and stared it for inspiration. Sumac! That adds a sourish flavor and wouldn't be off-putting in this. I added 1 t. sumac and another 1/2 t. Aleppo. More salt is always a good idea; another 1 t.

Tasted again. I hadn't harmed anything, at least. Still kind of cloying. It really needed acid at this point but it had thickened so nicely I hated to thin it and back up. Added another 1 t. Aleppo pepper. It was pretty good by the end but still sweeter than I'd wanted. You could pour this on ice cream and no one would bat an eye.

Recipe #5: Dried Tiny Tomatoes from Food in Jars. This was the day I picked 14 pounds, tired after a full and intense week, and I wanted to move things along as quickly as possible. I kept the orange, red, and black cherry tomatoes and yellow grape tomatoes separate as I sliced and prepared the trays for my dehydrator. Very pretty!

Recipe #6: Slow Oven-Roasted Roma Tomatoes from Food in Jars. Yep, same "wow that's a lot of tomatoes" day.

Recipe #7: A cross between three recipes, with spice ranges provided because I used an initial quantity, then did a taste and adjust when it had cooked down pretty far. The inspirations:

• Sungold Tomato and Maple Jam, Food in Jars: I didn't have the maple sugar she called for, although I had some Demerara sugar left over from a long-ago recipe and that seemed as if it might bring some of the same depth of flavor. I had a mix of heirloom tomatoes, many of them a deep yellow meaning they'd have a similar acid profile.
• Smoked Rosemary Heirloom Tomato Jam, Chef Dr. Mike: This one doesn't include canning instructions and has an onion in it. I didn't trust its ratio of tomatoes to acidic ingredients but I liked the sound of the spice mix. I left out the onion, ignored the business about smoking salt, added ginger to the spice mix, and substituted crushed red pepper for the jalapeño I didn't have on hand. This recipe doesn't call for any sugar, which made me think about making a lower-sugar jam.
• Smoky, Spicy Skillet Tomato Jam, Food in Jars: I'd already made this one so I wanted a change. I took the proportions here of 1/4 c. (4 T.) lemon juice to 2 pounds of tomatoes. I thought my tomatoes might be pretty sweet so I didn't start with the same proportion of sugar. In another of her recipes the ratio was 1 cup of sugar per pound of tomatoes, which would be even higher.

Spicy Tomato Jam #2

• Tomatoes: 5 lb. mixed varieties, roughly chopped
• Sugar: 1-1/2 c. Demerara; I would have used brown sugar if I hadn't had this
• Lime juice/lemon juice: 1/2 c. plus 2 T. (I could have gone with 100% of either juice; I started with lime from Chef Dr. Mike's recipe, ran out, used lemon to finish out the quantity)
• Ginger paste: 1 to 1-1/2 T. (start with 1 T., taste and adjust)
• Cumin: 1 to 1-1/2 t.
• Coriander: 1 to 1-1/2 t.
• Crushed red pepper: 1 t. (more if you want to bring the heat)
• Salt: 1 to 1-1/2 t.
• Cinnamon: 1/2 to 1 t.
• Allspice: 1/2 to 1 t.
• Ground black pepper: 1/2 t.
• Rosemary, fresh sprigs chopped fine: < 1/2 t. (I didn't measure with precision; next time I'd use more)

I tasted when it had reduced a fair amount but wasn't quite to the jammy stage. It had a slight peppery quality and all the other spices seemed to have disappeared. I like spice-forward cooking so I went at it again, adding 1/2 the original quantity for ginger, cumin, coriander, and salt, and 1/2 t. each cinnamon and allspice. 

Next time I might not oomph up the ginger quite that much since it dominates other spices. The rosemary disappeared utterly and I didn't make another run at establishing it amidst everything else that was going on. 

Recipe #8: Marinated Dehydrated Tomatoes by Food in Jars. These are like tomato candy despite the Italian seasoning. They look a little bit like pepperoni slices and I bet they'd be amazing on pizza, or on a cracker or baguette slice with a delicious cheese. I've done two batches of these, the first with 5 pounds of tomatoes, the second with 10.

Recipe #9: Easy Addictive Tomato Chutney: Ended up making this one. Her trick of whizzing the tomatoes in the food processor saved time but made kind of a mush so I did that for half the tomatoes, chopped up the other half, although I'm not sure in the end that it mattered because it all cooks down. 8 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints

Future possibilities as the tomatoes keep coming on: 

• Spicy Heirloom Tomato Chutney by Food in Jars. Yes, yes, I already have quite a large collection of chutneys on hand (zucchini, blackberry, apple, leftover green tomato chutney from last season), but this sounds so good!
• Yellow Tomato and Basil Jam by Food in Jars with the addition of rosemary. I think that will be pretty tasty, although I already have three kinds of tomato jam.
• Basic canned tomatoes so I can make delicious soup midwinter.

What are you doing with all of your tomatoes?