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Category: Tomatoes-Tomatillos

  • Instant Pot Chicken Chile Verde

    Pretty much every Colorado Native, most Transplants and every Red Wagon CSA member and employee I know has Green Chile running through their veins. We eat it on, and with everything!

    There is no wrong or right way to make or eat it. This is just one simple recipe I like that is adaptable and really fast because it uses an Instant Pot/Pressure cooker and only 4 ingredients if you don’t count salt and spices.

    Chicken chile verde is a great base for lots of quick meals like burritos, nachos, tacos or tostadas.

    You can substitute the tomatillos with fresh or canned tomatoes if you like, and you can substitute pork for the chicken.

    Chicken Chile Verde

    • 1-2 pounds chicken thighs or breasts. You can also use any cut of pork, though perhaps that might be a different blog post…?
    • 1 pound of tomatillos or tomatoes, fresh or canned
    • 1 pound, about 6 or 7 roasted green chilies
    • 1 medium onion
    • garlic and spices are optional, I used 1 teaspoon each of cumin and oregano
    • salt and pepper to taste

    I used a pressure cooker, the times and directions are pretty much the same for Instant pots.

    1. Place the chicken in the instant pot or pressure cooker to brown the skin, you aren’t cooking it, just browning it. You will remove the skin and any bones after cooking but I like to leave it in now for more flavor. If you are using skinless/boneless just brown the meat.

    2. Put the rest of the ingredients into a blender or food processor and whiz that up for a minute or so.

    Hey look, you made salsa verde!

    3. Dump the salsa verde in with the chicken and cook it under medium to high pressure for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes slowly release the pressure. Remove the meat and when it is cool enough to handle discard the bones and skin and shred the chicken.

    In about a 1/2 hour you have some lovely chicken chile verde delicious as is or ready to make into any number of meals through the week.

    This is easily doubled or tripled and freezes beautifully.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Roasted Green Chile Tomatillo Pozole

    This is a great meal using either roasted poblano or Anaheim chiles. Pozole is a traditional Mexican stew made with homily, red or green chiles, some sort of protein-traditionally pork but chicken or beans are easily substituted. Topping pozole with fresh ingredients like cabbage and radishes make this a festive meal great for holidays but easy enough for weeknight meals.

    Homily is an ingredient you might not be familiar with. You can find dried or canned homily in the Mexican food section of any grocery store. I used dried homily (follow cooking directions on the package) canned is fine to use too.

    I based this dish using this recipe, the original recipe is VERY detailed. I’ll post my modified/simplified version but do check out the original recipe if you want to take a deep dive into pozole.

    Green Chile Tomatillo Pozole you can double or triple this. Leftovers are great.

    • 4-5 cups stock, I used chicken but vegetable is fine
    • 1 pound boneless chicken breasts, pork or 2 cans drained beans
    • 1 pound tomatillos husks removed and washed (if you can’t find fresh tomatillos canned are fine, they are in the same isle as refried beans and enchilada sauce.)
    • 1 large onion chopped
    • 1 pound of roasted green chiles skins and seeds removed chopped
    • 2 or three cloves of garlic
    • 1 teaspoon each of cumin and oregano-salt and pepper!
    • 2 or 3 cups of cooked homily, drained
    • garnishes like cabbage, avocado, radishes, lime, cilantro, onion slices

    Cook the chicken, if using, in a large heavy-bottomed pot, bring the stock and spices to a boil. Add the chicken breasts, cover and simmer gently over low heat until  tender and cooked through, about 25 minutes. Transfer the chicken breasts to a plate and shred and return the chicken back to the stock.

    Make the green chile sauce. In a blender add tomatillos, onion, garlic, roasted chiles and garlic. Blend until smooth, scraping down sides if necessary.

    Pour the green chile sauce into the chicken soup pot. Add the the hominy and bring to a gentle simmer over moderate heat. It will turn dark green and thicken up add water or more broth if it is too thick. Taste the soup.  Season with salt, pepper and maybe a squeeze of lime.

    Serve with whatever garnishes you like.

  • Freezing Whole Tomatoes and Tomatillos

    Just a quick post to let you know that you you don’t have to make sauce or peel and prepare tomatoes or tomatillos for later use. You can easily freeze pop your whole tomatoes or tomatillos and it couldn’t be simpler.

    Just put your washed and dried tomatoes or tomatillos in the freezer on a tray until they are frozen hard.

    When they are completely frozen move them to a plastic bag for long storage and to take up less room. Return them to the freezer, use them in 6-9 months.

    When you’re ready to use your frozen tomatoes or tomatillos, just let them thaw at room temperature. Once they’ve defrosted, the tomato skins peel right off! Use the tomatillos without peeling.

  • 5 minute Tomatillo Peach Salsa

    Salsa is basically salad, right? This is a very very basic raw salsa that comes together in less then 5 minutes and can be endlessly adapted  to whatever you have or are serving. Start with this basic recipe. The flavors are intense so adding other ingredients are fun because they don’t get lost. Try adding some black beans, corn or tomatoes to make it more of a salad or relish or you could blend in some avocado to make it creamy. Adding some crumbly cheese like feta might complement a dish you are serving it with like burritos or tacos?

    I used only 6 ingredients;

    • 6 tomatillos peeled and husked,
    • 1 peach blended in the salsa I used one more for garnish I didn’t put in the picture
    • 1/4 of an onion
    • 1 clove of garlic
    • juice of one lime
    • a large handful of cilantro

    I put it in a blender all at once and ran it until it was smooth and add salt and pepper and tasted it if I needed more lime or salt.

    Voila Simple as is but have fun to make your special house salsa with your own add-ins.

    Have a great week. I’ll see you at pickup.

    Mo

     

  • Tomato Egg Drop Soup

    This is a fast, easy to adapt dish that can pull anything you are having for dinner together. I like it with rice or any grain to make it into a meal. I also like to throw any leftover vegetable in at the end, corn is especially good. Chinese dumplings or won tons are good too.

    I sometimes leave out the sesame oil and soy sauce and add Parmesan and tortellini, so good, not authentic, but really tasty.

    Oh and it is good hot or room temperature. I prefer any leftovers at room temp for breakfast or lunch.

    I added rice and some chard today.

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    The recipe/method is super easy and found here, on this great website. You need just a few pantry ingredients and about 5 minutes.

    Chop up a tomato, beat an egg and make a slurry out of cornstarch and water.

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    Cook the tomato and add the other ingredients and stir in the beaten egg and then the cornstarch.

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    Do taste it carefully at this point. It will need salt and maybe more pepper.

    Keep it simple.

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    Or make it more of a meal.

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    Have a great week.

    See you at pick-up.

    Mo

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Marcella Hazan’s Famous Tomato Sauce

    Tomatoes are full on. I have been eating, canning, and drying tomatoes for the last couple of weekends. I love Marcella Hazen’s super popular tomato sauce recipe, I usually make it in the winter with tomatoes I canned in the summer. I recently saw a blogger change the original recipe using fresh tomatoes. I decided to try it!

    This is one of those recipes, I know I say this all the time and I am going to say it again; that is more than a sum of it’s parts. The combination of ingredients and time sort of emulsifies and becomes silky and smooth and the fresh tomato taste stays true but there is a richness that is unique. It’s tempting to add herbs but I don’t. Sometimes simple is best. This is one of those times.

    You only need 4 ingredients.

    • 2 pounds of ripe tomatoes-I didn’t peel mine I just cored them and chopped them up
    • 5-8 tablespoons of butter. Some recipes call for 5 others call for 8, I use the whole stick of butter baby, but you do you.
    • 1 or 2 onions depending on the size, chop them up
    • salt

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    Chop everything up and throw it all in a sauce pan and simmer it for an hour.

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    It will look like this after about 20 minutes.

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    Keep cooking it. It will look like this after about 45 minutes.

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    After an hour or so, when all the vegetables have completely collapsed, hit it with an immersion blender or blend it in a blender or food processor and it will be lush and smooth like this.

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    This makes a generous 2 quarts of sauce. I froze some and I used some to make eggplant Parmesan.

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    Enjoy the fresh tomatoes while we have them, but maybe put a few quarts away in the freezer for winter. Fall is right around the corner and the tomatoes will be gone.

    Have a great week. I’ll see you at pickup.

    Mo

     

     

     

     

  • Let’s talk about Tomatillos and make some salsa.

    I have several people at pick-up ask me what to do with tomatillos. I tell them, anything you can do with a tomato you can do with a tomatillo. Preparing them is a little different than a tomato (tomatillos have a papery covering) and the taste is different, tart and tangy and a little citrusy if you eat it raw. If you haven’t eaten them raw, rinse one off and take a bite. Cooking-usually by roasting or grilling, tames the tartness.

    Let’s take a look. In the front row from left to right is a tomatillo in it’s paper, next one I started to peel it, next one has the paper off. When you are ready to use your tomatillos remove the paper and wash them. They are sticky for some reason.

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    If you want to make salsa you can gather your ingredients just like you would if you were making salsa with tomatoes.

    You’ll need;

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    • 1 1/2 to 2 pounds tomatillos, husks removed & washed
    • 2-4 jalapeños
    • 2-4 garlic cloves
    • 1 medium-large onion
    • fresh cilantro
    • salt and pepper
    • optional ingredients lime, cumin, olive oil, sour cream,  or avocado

    If you want raw salsa, just chop up everything to the texture you like, or throw everything a a food processor and process it to an even texture, taste it and adjust the seasonings. If I make raw tomatillo salsa I think it needs some fat from either olive oil, sour cream or avocados because it is really tart and the fat calms that down, so does serving it with something cheesy like nachos or a quesadilla. 

    Here is how I made the cooked version;

    1. Chop the onion in half, crush the garlic, and leave the jalapeños and tomatillos
    whole. Roast or broil on a baking sheet in a 450-degrees F oven for about 15 minutes,
    turning all halfway over through roasting time.

     

    2. In a food processor, add all roasted ingredients (peel the garlic!), plus cilantro and salt and pulse until all ingredients are chopped. Taste, taste, taste and adjust the tartness with lime, salt, olive oil. One of my favorite things I like to do with this salsa is blend an avocado in the food processor with everything, it makes it luscious and creamy and very green. It doesn’t keep in the refrigerator very long if you make it with avocado; only two or three days with an avocado, without it will keep at least 10 days. You can always add the avocado right  before serving it too.

    Dig in!

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    Have a great week. See you at pickup.

    Mo

     

     

     

  • Brown Butter Tomatoes and Corn

    Last year a CSA member (hi Merrill!) told me she made a dish that knocked her socks off, it was just tomatoes and brown butter. I thought about it a few times and never made it until yesterday. Oh, my. My oh my. You need to make this.

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    The recipe is here  , you really don’t need a recipe though. Here’s what you do; brown some butter

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    then pour it over the ripest, most beautiful tomatoes you have and put salt and pepper on it and swoon. I had some leftover roasted corn and I thought; corn and butter are good-corn and brown butter are probably good too. I was right.

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    As we ate this we kept saying, “this is so good”. In one of the comments where the recipe is published someone said it is sort of reminiscent of lobster butter. Oddly it sort of is. I hope you try this.

    Have a great week, see you at pickup.

    Mo

     

  • Water-mule cocktail, and Corn Tomato Salad.

    Happy Labor Day. I wanted to share a couple things I made this weekend with the CSA bounty we got last week.

    My favorite thing to do with watermelons is to juice them and make cocktails. Last year I posted a watermelon margarita recipe. This year Moscow Mules are all the rage so yesterday we had Water-mules.

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    I extracted the juice the same way I did when making the watermelon margarita and used the below proportions and directions for the drink;

    Ingredients

    • 1/4 cup watermelon juice/pulp
    • 1 1/2 Ounces vodka
    • squeeze of lime
    • 4 Ounces ginger beer
    • watermelon wedge and mint leaves (for garnish)
    • ice cubes

    Directions

    Place the above in a (preferably a copper mug) glass, mix and enjoy

     

    I also made a nice tomato and corn salad.

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    I had everything except the basil and parsley from my CSA share, and I had the basil and parsley in my garden.

    I cut up two tomatoes and a few cherry tomatoes I had lurking on the counter, a red onion, and an ear of corn. That is raw corn. I just cut it off the cob and added handful of basil and parsley.

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    I dressed that with some red wine vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper and tossed it. There was so much juice from the tomatoes after I tossed it I thought; I need something to soak that up with. So I threw some croutons in the bottom of the serving bowl I was going to use and dumped the tossed vegetables on top of them. When you scooped up the salad the soaked croutons were an unexpected bonus!

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    And that was it. I think this could have been really good with some cheese on it, but we were having pizza so I opted out of any more cheese with the meal. You might want to add some mozzarella or feta though.

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    What’s not to love there?

    The croutons were leftover from a tomato and bread salad  I posted on last year. I made this night before. One of my favorite salads.

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    Yum and yay for fresh tomatoes!

    Have a great week.

    Mo

     

     

  • Braised Collard Greens with Tomatoes

    You can quickly saute collards like you do kale and chard, but I think collards really shine when they are braised.

    Braising breaks down the collards and makes them silky. I love the taste and texture of braised collards served over rice or corn bread.

    Here is a basic braised collard recipes. You can sub stock instead of tomatoes if you like, and you can braise the collards for 20 minutes, up to two hours or so for very done collards.
    I like them cooked a somewhere in between, like an hour or so. But taste as you go and see how you like your collards.
    The beauty of braising is you don’t lose any of the nutrients, they are all in the braising liquid.

    Braised Collard Greens with Tomatoes
    1 bunch of collard greens, washed, stems removed
    14.5 oz can tomatoes
    1 large onion, diced
    2 – 4 cloves garlic, minced
    1 tablespoon olive oil
    1 cup water or cooking stock
    salt + pepper to taste
    a sprinkling of smoked paprika and a glug of cider vinegar are optional but delicious.

    Directions;
    Roll washed and stemmed collard leaves in to a large bundle. Slice into one inch ribbons.

    Chopped Collards
    Chopped Collards

    Heat olive oil over medium heat. Cook onions and garlic over medium heat until onions soften and start to turn translucent. Add tomatoes to the pan, bring to a simmer. Add collard greens and a dash of salt + pepper, in batches, tossing with tongs to wilt. Add water to the pan and simmer on medium heat for 30 minutes or up to 2 hours, until collards are thoroughly cooked.
    Season to taste with salt and pepper.

    This is what it looks like after about 30 minutes. So, take it to here or further and enjoy.

    Saute with Tomatoes