Welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook! I’m glad you’ve joined me today!
This week, I am doing a “salute” to late summer produce. In keeping with last week’s methods of preserving tomatoes for the long winter months, this week, I’ll be featuring a couple of ways to preserve other bits of luscious late summer produce, such as sweet basil and peaches, as well as recipes to use and enjoy that late summer produce for dinner that night.
So let’s get cooking!
Today, I’ll start where I finished up last week–with tomatoes. Specifically, tomato jam–click here for the recipe. And oh my, are you in for a treat!
In season, I always get more tomatoes than we can consume, so I am always looking for new and creative ways to use them.
A couple of years ago, during the pandemic when I was spending pretty much all my time in my kitchen, I went way outside my tomato comfort zone and experimented with making tomato jam.
The first recipe I used was good, but lacked some depth, so I started tweaking the ingredients to find ways to kick it up a notch. I began by adding ginger because I love ginger. That was a distinct improvement, but still, it needed that something extra special. I added star anise and–wow! This jam is good enough to eat straight out of the jar…not that I would know anything about that.
Before I knew it, I was putting it on everything and eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches for the first time in probably 40 years.
Roasting the tomatoes in this recipe brings out the deep, sweet favors of the tomatoes, and the spices make this jam almost take on stone fruit and berry flavors. This jam is a real treat on English muffins with a smear of cream cheese for breakfast, or on crackers with goat cheese as an appetizer. Also would pair well with blue cheese, pork or game meat. And don’t get me started about how good it is on a big old burger–woof! woof!
I also love this recipe as another way to preserve tomatoes for use during those long winter months when lack of fresh tomatoes is, as the late, great John Denver would say, a “culinary bummer.” I make several batches of this jam in the early fall when tomatoes are at their peak and freeze it in jars for use later.
For this recipe, use ripe, still firm tomatoes. Tomatoes can go “sour” when they get a little past peak and just beginning to ferment. If you have a good sense of smell, you can smell when a tomato has started to go just past peak. Unfortunately–probably because the roasting concentrates the flavors of the tomatoes–if you use tomatoes that are a little past peak for this jam, you’ll taste it in the final product–no fair asking me how I know 😉
Tune in tomorrow as I continue my “salute” to late summer produce!
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
