Green Tomato Caponata Recipe

I realized/rediscovered that I had around 7 pounds of frozen green tomatoes left from last year's harvest. (This is what happens when your garage holds both a full-sized freezer and the old fridge with a freezer space you don't look into very often.)

I'm still more than fully stocked up with green tomato chutney and have full confidence that I'll end up with more green tomatoes at the end of this year's gardening. Last year I experimented with a chutney sauce and (unsuccessfullly) with green tomato ketchups (never again!).

This year it's caponata. I've made this before when I ended up with eggplant from a Buy Nothing source. It's delicious on pasta, rice, or bread as a chunky dip.

Sources: Two recipes, one not designed for canning that's essentially a caponata pickle, one that calls for ripe tomatoes and is tested for canning, made with different quantities of tomatoes.

• Pickled Green Tomatoes, Food in Jars: 3 lbs. green tomatoes
• Caponata Sauce, Ball Canning: 4 lbs. ripe tomatoes

Things I did:

• Increased the sugar the Ball recipe called for because I was using green tomatoes instead of ripe. For 7 lbs. of green tomatoes I used 3 T. brown sugar, 4 T. white sugar, basically 1 T. per pound/cup of tomatoes.
• Working with frozen tomatoes, most of them cherry or grape size, I gave up on the idea of removing the skins. I know, I know, you're supposed to take them off. 
• Pro tip/note to self: In future freezing frenzy at the end of a long growing season, blanch tomatoes and pull the skins off, then chop before freezing. You'll thank yourself.
• I wanted the balsamic of the pickle recipe. I checked my (store brand) balsamic and it's 6% acidity. In the step where I sauteed onion, bell pepper, and celery, I used 1/4 c. balsamic in place of the 1/4 c. water the Ball recipe calls for. I honestly don't know if the flavor came through, given the strong flavors of all the other ingredients.
• Added a sprinkle of red chili pepper flakes, then another one. This honestly could be oomphed more.
• I used the green Castelvetrano olives but I don't honestly love olives even though I cook with olive oil, so I reduced the amount. You do you.

(Green) Tomato Caponata 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prep a roasting pan by spraying or brushing it lightly with oil. Prep your canning jars.

• Green tomatoes: 7 pounds, around 7 cups after smashing in the food processor
• Feel free to use ripe tomatoes! If you do, reduce the sugar to 2 T.
• Eggplant: 2 small ones, about 2 lb (1 kg) total, stemmed and quartered lengthwise
• Sweet red peppers: 2, seeded and halved, or use 3 jars of roasted red peppers
• Onions: 2 large, diced
• Celery: 2-3 ribs, diced
• Garlic: 6 cloves, minced or crushed, or 1 T. garlic paste from a tube
• Water or balsamic vinegar: 1/4 cup for sauteeing step
• Olives: Castelvetrano green olives or kalamata black olives, pitted and chopped, 1/2 cup up to 1-1/2 cups
• Capers: 1/2 cup, drained
• Salt: 1-1/2 T.
• Black pepper: 1 T.
• Red pepper flakes: 1/4 t., or more to taste
• Red wine vinegar, or another vinegar 5% acidity or greater: 1 cup
• Brown sugar: 3 T. (1 T. if using ripe tomatoes; feel free to start with less sugar of either variety and adjust to your taste)
• White sugar:  4 T. (1 T. if using ripe tomatoes)

Oven roasting

Roast tomatoes, eggplants, and red peppers skin side up for 25-30 minutes, until skins begin to char. Remove and let cool until you can handle them without burning yourself. Remove skins. Chop tomatoes and set aside in one bowl. Chop peppers and scoop eggplants from skin (or peel skin from eggplant, whichever way you do it) and set those aside in another bowl.

Get the canning water heating and prep your jars: Depending on the size of your canning pot you may want to start it warming while the veggies are roasting. 

Once the vegetables are out of the oven, reduce heat to 200 degrees and put your jars in there on a roasting pan or cookie sheet to sterilize them.

Sauteeing

In a nonreactive pan or Dutch oven big enough to hold all the ingredients, saute the diced onions and garlic in 1/4 cup water or balsamic vinegar until onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. At about 8 minutes in, add the garlic (which can burn if you put it in too early).

Combining and cooking

Add the tomatoes and all remaining ingredients, except eggplant and peppers. Simmer over medium heat, stirring frequently (tomato can burn quickly), until slightly thickened, about 20 minutes. 

Taste and adjust seasonings; maybe you want a bit more salt or more red chili flakes. 

Stir in eggplant and peppers and cook an additional 5 minutes.

Canning

By now your big kettle of water is boiling and your jars are sterilized. Fill jars, leaving a 1/4 inch air space. Wipe rims with a damp paper towel. Dip lids in the boiling water and put them on the jars, adjusting to fingertip tight. 

Process for 35 minutes. When you take them out, set them on a towel on top of a cookie rack and wait for that satisfying ping/pop.

For full details on canning how-to, go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Yield: 5 pints, 7 half-pints

Related reading and recipes

• Cherry Cherry Good: Pickled Cherries and Chocolate Cherry Jam
• Apple Mint Jelly, No Pectin Needed
• Mixed Citrus Ginger Marmalade Take 2
• Spiced Apple Butter Recipe 
• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce
• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup 
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples 
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe 
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears! 
• Future Marmalade 
• Vegan Cranberry Caramelized Red Onion Orange Chutney Recipe Experimentation 
• "Sweet Harvest" 
• All my posts about food, gardening, and the environment

Living, Every Day

"What are the things you do to make everyday life enjoyable?"

This question in the weekend thread on Ask A Manager, where we can talk about anything but work, sparked a reflection on the many ways I'm able to do just that. 

I have a morning routine that gives me a peaceful start to the day. I write in my journal, read some poetry, and if my schedule allows I do a short yoga practice and/or meditate. But first, I sit on my sofa with my cat on my lap, drink good French Press coffee my sweetheart makes for me, let my brain wake up. I read poetry because it won't ensnare me the way fiction will, and nonfiction so often feels like work or homework. Both of my daughters live far away and I often record a poem for them and send the link if it's online, or a picture of the page in the book I'm reading. If I go too long without doing that I get a "where's the poetry, Mom?" message.

As part of my morning routine I visit grateful.org and respond to the question of the day. The community there is warm and welcoming, and the question always reminds me of my generally great good fortune. I read responses from people who haven't been as fortunate and it's clearly helping them too, as we pause to pay attention the way I'm doing with this question.

An element of the journal—and if you stop reading after this paragraph you've gotten the most important thing I do: As I start each day's pages I set one part of a page apart and head it "Today's delights—" thanks to reading Ross Gay's The Book of Delights*. I enjoy doing some decoration of the spot and use a different color of ink so it stands out. And then I pay attention! Over the course of the day I find what I'm looking for, which is the small delights each day holds. It might be that first cup of fresh, hot coffee; the cat's warmth on my lap and the way he leans into my hand to have his chin skritched; putting together an outfit I really love for the color combination; seeing a deer on the sidewalk in our neighborhood (so far I've been lucky and they haven't jumped the fence to snack on my garden); the social energy of a community event; hearing the deep tones of the windchimes outside my office window when the breeze picks up. Whatever I find delightful, which happens when I pause and pay attention to that happy little zing.

Other things:

I got a walking pad that has made a real difference in my energy level over the course of the day. When I can I also go outside for brief walks between meetings. This isn't skipping work, this is work; the brain needs unscheduled time to process and make new connections. I live in a small neighborhood with a loop street and almost no traffic, which makes it easy to do 2 or 3 loops. If I had a linear street I'd probably pick a landmark as a turnaround point. 

I turn some meetings into walking meetings, too. I live near both a small park and a big park. Walking and listening makes me a more attentive participant than if I sit at my desk with three screens in front of me and plenty of emails awaiting a reply and inviting me to tune out the meeting. I love being in a green space hearing bird calls, seeing ferns and moss, winding along the soft trails.

When I go outside or when I sit at a table I have near a window, I look at the sky. I might watch clouds moving, which I can do right now, puffy white clouds against a blue sky; appreciate the deep blue if that's what I have; decide that all my walking will be inside because it's pouring rain. Whatever it is, the sky is always there and I feel as if I've ignored it more often in the past than I paid attention to it, once I outgrew lying on the lawn and looking up to identify cloud pictures. (A very delightful thing to do that I'm coming back to)

Thanks to my sweetheart I stay stocked up on dark chocolate sea salt truffles. In the evening I eat one, maybe two, for a touch of sweetness at the end of the day.

An important piece of this: I don't tell myself I've been "good" in what I ate and therefore somehow earned the chocolate. Food is enjoyable and I let myself enjoy it without any calorie-counting or nutritional analysis. (I'm fortunate not to have any health conditions that would require me to do this.) Giving up the societally created pressure to have a body that looks a certain way has been very freeing. My body can move and laugh and hug and that's what counts.

I ride my bike or take the bus for most transportation. I chose to (and could afford to) live in a location that lets me do this. I find driving stressful, whereas when I ride my bike I feel joyful and free and arrive happy. On the bus I see the regulars, look at the houses and yards we pass, maybe listen to a podcast. Either way I don't have to worry about finding or paying for a parking spot when I arrive at my destination.

I grow a garden and preserve a lot of food through canning, freezing, and dehydrating. It's such a delight to pull a jar of jam out in midwinter, open it up and smell the raspberries I grew in the summer. I give away much of what I can and it makes me happy to share the bounty.

I love this question. What's your answer? 

*Bookshop.org affiliate link. Go to your local independent bookstore if you can, or get it from your library, but the link is here if you need it.

In Search of Mexican Chocolate Shortbread

On vacation in Port Townsend at the end of June I encountered Oaxacan chocolate shortbread cookies made by Makabi & Sons, a lucky purchase at Aldrich's. A delicious slow burn, a touch of cinnamon, chocolate shortbread—I was hooked. I wanted to replicate this experience at home if I could.

As with my various adventures in canning, I compared recipes to identify key variables. This led to the first baffling discovery: A big swing in the amount of cinnamon relative to the amount of flour and cocoa powder between the first two recipes I read. Why oh why? 

I didn't read every recipe I found and try to come up with my own proportions. Instead I decided to try the first two I found, with one small adjustment.

Recipe #1: Mexican Chocolate Shortbread from Viktoria's Table. It calls for the same amount of cinnamon as my second candidate but has only half as much flour, cocoa powder, butter etc.

Recipe #2:  Mexican Chocolate Shortbread from Averie Cooks. 

Recipe #3: Mexican Chocolate Shortbread from Rachel Cooks. This one's a little like Recipe #1 and Recipe #2 had a baby with a small mutation on the sugar gene. It has the proportions of #2 for flour, butter, and sugar, but only half the cinnamon; the addition of dark chocolate chips of #1; and it uses powdered sugar rather than granulated sugar.

I baked recipes #1 and #2, saving #3 for later. On #1 I reduced the cinnamon to 1 teaspoon, making the proportions more comparable to #2. The recipe calls for 1/8-1/4 teaspoon of cayenne; I went with 1/4 t. The recipe calls for 2 ounces of shaved dark chocolate. I had dark chocolate chips on hand so I used those, no shaving involved although maybe I should have chopped them to make smaller bits.

Taste test results: I wouldn't kick either of these to the curb, but recipe #2 is my favorite. I thought the addition of dark chocolate chips to #1 might give it the edge, but no. #2 has greater depth of flavor, probably thanks to the additional spices in the mix. I also think the thicker slices of dough in #2 gave a more genuine shortbread consistency. #1 might have fared better with that thickness but it called for thinner slices and I followed the recipe. That yielded a consistency a little more like a regular cookie, perhaps thanks to the dark chocolate in the batter.

The cayenne provides a nice slow, delayed burn at the back of the throat. Either recipe could stand a bit more cayenne for my taste. I was trying to come close to the Makabi & Sons cookies and didn't quite get there. I'm now curious about Recipe #3 and whether powdered sugar would yield the final dryness and snap of the store cookies that was part of the appeal along with the heat. Try those if you find them in the store; they're delicious! And they'll give you a baseline for your own adventures in baking.

ADDENDUM: Came back to add the either genius or over-the-top (or both) idea I had while munching on these. What about making a sandwich cookie with the chocolate cherry jam? Or a bowl of ice cream topped with the jam and the cookies adding crunch. I mean, you do you, but this all sounds decadent and wonderful to me. I'm planning to make a blackberry chocolate chili jam based on this Larder Love recipe later and that's another candidate, but possibly too much chili overall.

Cherry Cherry Good: Pickled Cherries and Chocolate Cherry Jam

A farmers' market run yielded 6+ pounds of red cherries of unspecified variety, appearance similar to Bing. I had a plan: One tried and true recipe, one new one. And I have the purplish fingernails to prove I executed on all that cherry pitting. Good thing my friend Stefanie has the handy kind of cherry pitter with the little box to catch the pits and the spring-action pitting rod.

The Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries are on permanent repeat. The first year I didn't make enough to give any away. My precious, mine! The second year I added too much salt to one of two batches, then mixed up the jars, so I couldn't give any of it away because I didn't want to give away the batch that wasn't as good. Oh darn, I guess I'll have to eat all of those jars too....

This year I used the tall skinny half-pint jars so I can tell them apart at a glance, besides having the cue on every label that tells you what year I put something up.

Yield: 12 half-pints, and that isn't enough!

The Chocolate Cherry Jam, on the other hand.... It's hard for me to say the words "too much chocolate", but the amount of cocoa powder in the Ball Chocolate Cherry Jam goes some distance toward drowning out the cherries. It's delicious as a chunky chocolate sauce with fruit flavor, but next time I'd use about half the amount of cocoa powder and taste the results before committing any more. That won't affect the jelling.

[EDIT UPDATE TO CHANGE MY MIND! As my taste tester, Sweet Hubs said he could taste the cherries just fine. A couple of days later I put some of this jam on a bran muffin and was more than satisfied by the balance of chocolate and cherry. This jam is awesome. Make it.]

I started out trying to make it without pectin, ended up adding a pouch of liquid pectin when it just wasn't giving me any sheeting action after a fair amount of cooking.

Tiny tweaks:

• I added a teaspoon of vanilla early on since that enhances chocolate (but I don't think that created the over-chocolatey results).
• At a later taste test when I couldn't really get the cherry flavor I added 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract, being cautious so I wasn't making it an almond recipe, but knowing that the flavors of almonds and cherries show up in maraschino cherries and a bit of almond should enhance the cherry presence. Not by enough, though.

Yield: 3 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints

Related Reading and Recipes

• Apple Mint Jelly, No Pectin Needed
• Mixed Citrus Ginger Marmalade Take 2
• Spiced Apple Butter Recipe 
• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce
• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup 
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples 
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe 
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears! 
• Future Marmalade 
• Vegan Cranberry Caramelized Red Onion Orange Chutney Recipe Experimentation 
• "Sweet Harvest" 
• All my posts about food, gardening, and the environment