Processing…..

It’s one of those days, back from the market the fresh food laid out, recipes floating around what to do to capture the freshness of the purchase. Usually a simple salad is prepared or just tasting the produce with bread is a way to assess the flavors. It’s also a time to have a fresh fruit bowl as a meal.

Tomatoes, still coming  from the garden need to be processed. Some have been scalded, cooled and peeled for the freezer. A real easy way to process tomatoes is to juice them, a bowl filled with fresh picked cherry tomatoes yielded about 20 ounces of juice. The pulp was the chefs treat , good smeared on bread with salt and pepper. Having an attachment for juicing for the mixer makes this an easy task, a worthwhile purchase years ago. Just before bottling, strained with a filter type bag.

 

Processing tomato juice

Tomato juice

One of the other uses for tomato is salsa. Onion, shallot, chives, hot peppers are just some of the additions along with cilantro and various seeds.

tomato salsa over water spinach on flour tortilla, just one of the uses of the cherry tomato.

Other preparations are, water spinach pesto, and basil pesto although I use the term basil loosely, some of the labeling from the market, and my tasting disagree , but I’m not familiar with different type  of basil, none the less the green leaves were mixed with garlic, chives, oil, and salt and pepper via the food processor yielding a very concentrated paste. The home made pesto guarantees an easy way to incorporate the greens into your diet without cooking and as a bread lover a meal in itself when applied to fresh bread or crackers. Dressing pasta is also a favorite of the pesto.  Another leafy green with a lemony flavour was added to each pesto. Also as it was time to bottle Kombucha some of the lemony leaves were added to each bottle. Green beans were trimmed and frozen.

 

Processing water spinach

As a traditional pesto might include Parmesan cheese, none was available at the time. Also some pecans and toasted sesame seeds were added to some of the pesto.

I find a pleasant surprise when I unwrapped the pork belly, atop there were ribs, which I trimmed for an additional meal. 

Trimmed pork belly, ready for freezing or immediate meal.

Mango can be made into a chutney for a flavorful addition to a meal or a dessert.