Really Fantastic Green Tomato Relish

While I was leafing through the cookbook looking for dessert recipes I came across a couple of recipes for green tomato pie. That didn't quite work because of the oven, but it gave me an idea. Look at the chutneys and relishes. There it was, Green Tomato Relish.
This is not any Green Tomato Relish. This relish made me want to rush out and buy hot dogs on Saturday night, just so I could eat the relish with the hot dogs. The fact that I had already had dinner was of no consequence. This relish is amazing as topping for cheese and crackers. This relish is so good, you want to eat it with a spoon. If you can still find green tomatoes in your local farmers market, you should make this relish right now.
This is green tomato season. Farmers pick the tomatoes that are left on the vines, ripe or not. Some people ripen them on the window sill. I use them to can.

The last tomatoes of 2014

On November 13, the first frost of the season was forecast. I went out to the garden to see what we had that might be harvested. We had an amazing crop of green tomatoes, which I picked, as well as quite a respectable number of hot peppers. That took care of the tomatoes. I walked up to Bethesda to the Women's Farm Market in search of the peppers and onions called for in the recipe.
The farmer had a basket of  "smaller" peppers, half green, half red  and large sweet onions. I was perplexed as to quantities. The recipe called for 15 green tomatoes, which I had, and 36 red and green peppers. Even the smaller peppers were pretty large by the standards of the 1960s , so I reasoned that 15 peppers would be enough to make the full amount of the recipe. This may have been somewhat faulty reasoning, but it seemed to work out in the end.
The friendly farmer sold me the peppers, onions and a pound of Brussels sprouts, and gave me a large paper shopping bag from Whole Foods to cart it home in. No sooner had I walked out of the market that I noticed that the handle was torn, and would certainly not last the two mile walk home. I loaded as many peppers into my too small carry bag as it would take, thus reducing the weight on the paper bag,  and took the bus back to Friendship Heights. There I went to Giant to buy the rest of the ingredients, white vinegar and sugar, as well as a plastic bag to carry everything home in.
Once home, I started chopping. The tomatoes had to be chopped and then sprinkled with salt, after which they had to sit for an hour. Then came cutting up the peppers into "large cubes". This is a time consuming process that had to be interrupted when Bob and I went to church for the cabaret that a choir member stages every few months. The parish hall is transformed into a night club and singers in sparkly outfits sing torch songs.
I got back to the relish Saturday afternoon. This is a recipe that is greatly enhanced by a Cuisinart. The directions say, run the onions and vegetables through a food grinder. The Cuisinart, judiciously used, results in relish of a perfect consistency. Pulse, scrape and check. Don't just buzz, or you will have soup.  Another item that speeds things up is the tea ball.  The directions say to sew the spices into a cheesecloth bag.  I dumped the cloves and celery seed into the tea ball, and put the two cinnamon sticks into the relish, to be fished out prior to canning.
This recipe results in a perfect sweet/sour balance of flavors, and slightly crunchy relish. Many times my canned goods end up gathering dust at the back of the closet in the kitchen, but this one will be used up, I know it.

Really Fantastic Green Tomato Relish

12 green tomatoes cored
1/3 cup coarse salt
24 green peppers
6 red sweet peppers
12 large sweet onions
1 gallon boiling water
4 cups white vinegar
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon whole cloves
2 tablespoons stick cinnamon pieces
1 teaspoon celery seed

1. Chop the tomatoes and sprinkle with the salt. Let stand one hour. Drain.
2. Core and seed green and red peppers and trim away the white veins. Cut peppers into large cubes. Put peppers and the onions through a food chopper. (Cuisinart, please.) Add half the water and drain immediately in a colander.
3. Add the remaining water and let stand ten minutes. Drain.
4. Add the vinegar and sugar. Tie the cloves, stick cinnamon and celery seeds in a cheesecloth bag and add it. (Use a tea ball.) Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer, uncovered, exactly thirty minutes. Discard the spice bag.
5. Pour the relish into hot sterilized jars and seal in a boiling water bath for fifteen minutes, beginning the timing after the water is boiling. Remove from the boiling water allow to cool and store in a cool, dark, dry place. Makes about six quarts.

Fannie Farmer's Watermelon Pickle

Even though pickled watermelon rind is a quintessential American food, appearing in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy, The New York Times Heritage Cookbook does not have a recipe for it. Go figure. However, since a half watermelon had been lurking in our crisper since June 2, and both my husband and Laura, who lives in our basement, go nuts over pickled watermelon rind, I decided to put the rind to good use.
Canning seems to have increased in popularity among the younger foodies out there, so there should be an audience for this. As pickle recipes go, it is moderately time consuming. The rind needs to soak for three hours if you add lime water (more on this later) and all the cutting, peeling, and boiling takes about three more hours. It also requires a fairly substantial outlay of cash on canning equipment. You will need a canning kettle for the boiling water bath, equipped with a rack so the jars are not sitting on the bottom of the kettle, and jars, lids and rings. These things are now available at your local hardware store. If you make the expenditure, you will be able to enjoy canning vegetables, fruits, jams and pickles for the rest of your life.
I chose this particular recipe, among several out there, including one in the always popular Joy of Cooking, because it did not call for hard to find ingredients such as oil of cloves and oil of cinnamon. The Fannie Farmer Cookbooks were a staple in our house when I was growing up. My mother had the 1941 edition when she embarked upon her married life and actually had to learn how to cook. I used to pour over the menu section, drooling over such highlights of entertaining as the smorgasbord, the young children's party and the buffet. By the time I cleaned out my parents' house, 20 years after their deaths, the 1941 edition had virtually crumbled into oblivion. I did keep my sister's copy, the 1965 edition, its pages slightly singed from the time she fell asleep and burned up the cabinets in her New York apartment. This recipe comes from that cookbook.
Watermelon pickle is the original "Use it up, wear it out, make it last or do without," recipe in the spirit of the Depression. The cook is making use of a part of the fruit that would ordinarily be thrown away. I wanted to use up the half watermelon, but as I looked at it, and at the recipe, I decided that one half watermelon would not be enough. So, Thursday, after yoga, I found myself in the odd position of buying a food product so I would have enough material so as not to let leftovers go to waste. I lugged my new watermelon home on the bus, along with two pounds of sugar and two quarts of white vinegar.
After lunch, I started cutting, peeling and boiling. For some reason, this recipe, along with many others written before 2000 suggests that the cook boil the watermelon rind and then peel it. That always seems dumb to me. I find it easier to peel vegetables first, and then boil them. For one thing, it is easier to peel a cold vegetable than a hot vegetable. You need a good peeler to peel watermelons. The peel is tough. Remember to peel away from you. I forgot this elementary safety tip and took a hunk of skin the size of a navy bean off my left thumb. Blood began flowing everywhere. I wrapped my thumb up in a kitchen towel and went back to work. It was a moderately serious injury. By dinnertime, there was a collection of bloody towels worthy of Sweeny Todd lying at the foot of the basement stairs.

By four o'clock, I had cut up my left over watermelon and half a new watermelon, boiled it, cut what was left of the watermelon fruit off the rind, and put it to soak in lime water, or its modern equivalent. Last week, when I was looking into making watermelon pickle, but decided I wasn't up to canning, my husband Bob came back from the hardware store with a jar of something called Pickle Crisp Granules. This is the chemical calcium chloride. Lime is actually calcium oxide. The label on the jar of granules says it works three times faster than pickling lime. So, if I had read the directions, I would have had to soak the rind only one hour instead of three. But, I didn't read the directions. Pickle Crisp Granules are available at your hardware store, and possibly at your local supermarket if you live in an area that does a lot of canning. I don't expect much from my supermarket.
While the rind is soaking, make the pickling syrup. Fannie's quantities turned out not to be sufficient for an entire melon, so I am increasing the proportions by one-fourth. The result is spicy, not too sweet, and a beautiful, translucent gold. Bob pronounced the finished pickles up to standard.

Watermelon Pickle

Rind of one watermelon, about the size of a basketball

Pickling Syrup

5 cups white vinegar
1 1/4 cups water
5 cups sugar
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 1/2 sticks of cinnamon
1 tablespoon allspice berries

Put all the ingredients of the syrup in a large saucepan and boil until the sugar dissolves. (About five minutes.)

1. Cut the watermelon in the traditional crescent shaped slices, remove the flesh of the melon, and peel the rind. Cut the rind into six inch pieces and boil it for five minutes. Scrape the remaining melon flesh off the rind, and cut the pieces into cubes.
2. Cover the cubes with water in which Pickle Crisp Granules have been dissolved and soak for one hour.
3. Meanwhile, make the pickling syrup, wash your jars and sterilize them and the lids and rings in the boiling water bath kettle.
4. Drain the melon rind, rinse it off, and cover with fresh water. Simmer until the melon rind is tender.
5. Drain off the water, and cover the melon rind with the pickling syrup. Simmer until the rind is clear (translucent, really) and the syrup thick, adding water if necessary.
Note: My rind became translucent after about 40 minutes of simmering, but the syrup did not thicken. I just went ahead and canned the pickles at that point.
6. Pack the hot pickles and syrup in the hot, sterilized jars. Put on the lids and rings, and submerge the filled jars in the boiling water bath. The pickles should stay in the boiling water for 15 minutes.
7. Lift the hot jars out of the boiling water bath with the rack and leave them to cool.
Makes seven pints.

French Potato Salad (Gluten Free)

I have firm opinions about potato salad. It should be firm. An ice cream scoop of potato salad should hold its shape. It should be eggy and scattered with chopped celery. A sprinkling of vinegar over the cooked potatoes helps pick up the flavor. Unfortunately, I have been unable to produce such a potato salad. The people who can produce it seem to be primarily African American cooks. A friend of mine had an African American household employee who used to give us containers of potato salad to take on our campouts in the fields. Even though we had a full menu of main course, vegetables, potatoes baked in the coals and sometimes even soup, I insisted that we take Minnie's potato salad.
I ran into it again 25 years later at a picnic I organized for a group of people at my primarily African American church. We had all been either confirmed or baptized together, and I wanted us to have a social event. I remember exclaiming over some potato salad, "Wow. This is delicious. It's just like my friend's .....mother, used to make." Major embarrassment avoided in the nick of time.
This recipe is not for that kind of potato salad. This is naked potato salad. It has a wine based dressing, and a sprinkling of herbs. No mayonnaise, no celery, no green onions. Nonetheless, it is not without charm. The dressing brings out the flavor of the potatoes, which are especially good served with cold beets in French dressing. It is lighter than mayonnaise based potato salad.
I served it last Saturday night when my son and daughter-in-law came over for a barbeque. Son is barbeque king. Their backyard, slightly larger than a postage stamp, contains a grill that would serve the survivors of a shipwreck to float several hundred miles to their rescue. He immediately took over the grilling of the boneless pork shoulder strips. I had already made the potato salad since it had to chill.
The biggest issue in this dish is the Pernod or Ricard used to flavor the potatoes. Pernod and Ricard (pronounced Ree-kard) are anise, or licorice flavored drinks from France, known as aperitifs. I am pretty much on board with all of French culture, especially its cuisine, but the rage for the aperitif escapes me. The idea is great. Everyone sits down before dinner, has a drink and perhaps cheese and crackers and talks over their day. It's what they drink that I don't like. In my somewhat limited experience, aperatifs might be wine, but generally are not. They are, shall we say, wines made from something other than grapes. They have an unusual taste.
According to the Pernod Ricard corporate website, Pernod is known in the south of France for its thirst quenching properties. It tastes alright. I like some other licorice flavored drinks, such as ouzo from Greece and Sambucca from Italy. It's major problem is, 1. We don't drink it, and 2. It is expensive.
With the dog in tow, I went to my little neighborhood liquor store, which is run by some tired looking Chinese gentlemen  and asked them for a small bottle of Pernod. He brought out a standard size bottle. Together with a bottle of Bulgarian wine he talked me into buying (Hint: don't) the bill came to $53. I told the proprietor to put the Pernod back on the shelf and took the dog six blocks north to the larger liquor store across the street from Starbucks. It turned out that Pernod costs around $40 a bottle, whether you buy it at tiny Sheffield Liquors or great big Circle Liquors. With a sigh of resignation, I paid Circle Liquors and trotted home with my coffee and my expensive bottle of aperitif.
My son and his wife were polite about the naked potato salad. They ate it, but did not wolf it down in the quantities consumed this Sunday at our barbeque for our daughter. (Any wolfing would have been done by my son. Daughter-in-law does not wolf.) If you find traditional potato salad heavy but enjoy cold potatoes, this dish might be for you.

French Potato Salad

8 medium sized potatoes
boiling salted water
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Pernod, Ricard or other anise-flavored liqueur
2 tablespoons beef broth
1/4 cup white wine
1/2 tablespoon chopped tarragon
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/2 cup oil

1. Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water until tender but still firm.
2. Peel the potatoes while still warm and cut into slices one-quarter-inch thick. Place in a salad bowl.
3. In another bowl, combine the salt, pepper, vinegar, Pernod broth and wine. Mix until the salt dissolves.
4. Add the tarragon, parsley and oil and mix well. Pour over the potatoes and toss gently but thoroughly until all the liquid is absorbed. Makes four to six servings.