Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Some pictures from the last day of "Basics of Culinary" at Publix Aprons Cooking School:
Cooking School album
As I mentioned previously, I bought some heirloom tomatoes, grown in Sandy Springs, from the Marietta Farmer's Market. My plan is to prepare and store the seeds for growing in my garden next season, and to create some homemade tomato sauce and salsa with the tomatoes.
I did a little research on the intarwebs, and decided on my method for preparing the seeds. Let me just say that heirloom tomatoes tend to be oddly shaped, and it makes seed recovery somewhat of an exploration rather than a process. My technique started with halving and spooning, and then ended up as a halve-then-wedge, then finger-scrap seeds. That seems to work the best for the bulging cavities that and interspersed in the meat of the tomato.
The next step was rinse the seeds a bit in a sieve, and strain the juice into my sauce. The seeds are currently sitting in a glass jar on top of the refridgerator waiting for the fermentation process to start. Once that happens, that will remove the gel coating on the seeds, and then I'll be ready to dry and store them.
The sauce is rather simple. A bunch of heirloom tomatoes, two cloves of fresh garlic, a handful of fresh basil, and some fresh oregano. I removed the stems and dumped everything into the food processor, blended everything together, then dumped everything into a stock pot. I brought the sauce up to a light boil, then reduced to a simmer and then transferred into a slow cooker for a nice, slow & low 8 hour simmer. The house smells fantastic!
I forgot to mention that I planned this excursion with the help of fellow epicurean Yvette, whom I have known for let's see.. going on 8 years or so. Since Steph is out of town and was unsure of my ability to contain the twinkles in an open area like that by myself, and Yvette played the willing partner. I was handling Devin, while Yvette had Maya, who has a mind of her own lately, so I'm not so sure if that activity will find its way onto Yvette's calendar anytime soon :) We did manage to enjoy the Square's park, which has a mini locomotive engine and tender for the kids to enjoy (see picture of Devin above).
So I selected a couple of heirloom tomatoes (I forgot the name), a pint of blueberries, some banana peppers, some hot peppers (of unknown variety), an eggplant, and some fresh basil and oregano. My plan was twofold: create some homemade salsa and tomato sauce using fresh, local ingredients (e.g. not canned or from the store); and to keep some heirloom seeds for my garden next year. Yes, you heard right. I'll be gardening next year since the kids will be old enough to help out tending to the harvest and weeding. (Do I sound Amish? Like I need to have a few more kids to tend to the fields?) Anyway - next post will detail my tomato sauce and seeding preparations, which happened this afternoon. The sauce is slow-cooking its way into a tasty reduction which should be fantastic, if the aromas in the house are any indication.
I'm going to finish up this post and get ready for the kids to wake from their naps, and we are headed over to Kim & Tony's for an afternoon of playtime with Natalie & Kathryn, plus some cooking out and some beer. I wish my brewing apparatus wasn't in storage.
One final note: the Tony and Brad funded most of the purchases today at the market thanks to an extremely lengthy poker game last night which wound up at 2:30am. I think I will be tired later.
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