pease porridge

Big Red

Now is the time for fresh, ripe tomatoes around here, which means that now is also the time for fresh tomato sauce (thanks to Lisa for reminding me - I had these photos all set, and then totally forgot to post about it).  At our farm we get a variety of tomatoes; the big heirlooms they pick for us, but the plum tomatoes and the cherries we get to pick ourselves.  One of my favorite smells in the world is that musky, tomato-on-the-vine-in-the-sun smell, so the pick-your-own part is kind of like free therapy.

This sauce, from The Italian Country Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper, takes advantage of a mix of tomatoes for a complex blend of sweet and bright flavors.  It's a good sauce for lasagne or filled pasta recipes, and also for adding to other sauces and soups to liven them up; it's also great on pasta if you like your sauce non-chunky.  I tend to like the chunks, but this recipe manages to distill the great taste of late-summer tomatoes, and it freezes well, too.  The recipe as written doesn't make a ton of sauce; I tend to double or even triple it whenever I make it.  If you're doing the same, remember to cook everything longer (and if possible, use a bigger pan) to get the same rich taste.

Garlic Scape Pesto

If you have never heard of garlic scapes before, you're not alone; I had heard about them, but never laid eyes on them until this summer.  Our farm has had them for the past two weeks, and between the two harvests I had enough to do what everyone - the web and real people, too - suggested I do with them: make pesto.

Garlic scapes are the curly little flower stalks that shoot up when you've planted garlic.  You're supposed to cut them off so the plant's energy heads to the bulb, which is fine with everyone concerned because they're super-delicious.  Sadly, they're only available for a limited time, and by the time they've straightened out, they're no good to anyone.

Garlic scapes are tender, green, and a bit milder than the bulb.  You can slice them up and use them in recipes where you might use chives or scallions.  Or, you can coarsely chop them, then puree them with olive oil and salt, to make a simple pesto.

That's what I did, anyway.  You can also add parmesan cheese and pine nuts (or fontina and walnuts, or pecorino and pistachios, whatever makes you happy), for a more pesto-y pesto, but I wanted to get the straight-up scape experience.  If you do it my way, what you end up with is a very thick, very concentrated green paste which is very, very garlicky.  It's almost too garlicky to eat straight, but put it on bread, or use it to make pasta sauce (about which, more tomorrow), and it's wonderful.