Homemade Marinara Sauce with Ravioli

I needed to do something with all the tomatoes we had (probably about 15 of them). I had read this New York Times article about grating tomatoes rather than peeling them, so I thought I'd grate tomatoes and make marinara sauce.

The technique worked really well, although I first started by using the second smallest grater holes, rather than the biggest one. The bigger ones work MUCH better, and you don't have to worry about scraping your fingers.

Before grating tomatoes, cut in half ("along the equator") and scrape out as many seeds as possible.

I made up the marinara sauce recipe as a I went. Here's what I did and what we did with the first batch of sauce.

-About 15 tomatoes (I didn't count before I started), grated.

-1 yellow onion, chopped

-A couple cloves of garlic, minced

-About a teaspoon of sugar

-About 1 cup loosely packed basil leaves

-Couple shakes of oregano, fennel, pepper, salt, crushed red pepper, cayenne pepper

-Olive oil

Heat oil in a saute pan. Saute onion and garlic until fragrant.

Add tomatoes and rest of ingredients.

Simmer on low for about an hour. The sauce should reduce and not be as watery.

It made about three batches that fit in three Tupperware containers. We put two in the freezer and used one for ravioli the next night.

For the ravioli, we used a container of frozen Rising Moon creamy artichoke and olive ravioli. You just low boil it for a few minutes until the ravioli floats and is pillowy.

With the sauce, we had eggplant and yellow summer squash to use up. So we sauteed the chopped vegetables with some olive oil and a bit of garlic powder, salt and pepper. After it was tender, we added the sauce to it and heated everything up.

The sauce turned out really good. It's a bit more watery than jarred sauce, but still was delicious!

What to Do with All Those Tomatoes

I seem to have been stockpiling tomatoes. We've been getting them from our CSA box, and the co-worker I split the box with is growing his own tomatoes, so I've been getting all of them. Plus, a neighbor has been giving us some. So, needless to say, we had a lot of tomatoes I had to use up.

I thought it would be a good opportunity to make both salsa and tomato basil (since I have a ton of basil, too) soup.

I made the salsa up as I went. I debated attempting to can the salsa. I'd like to do it sometime, but I just wasn't feeling up to it this past weekend. I ended up freezing two jars of it. I hope it's OK once it's time to have it!

Here's what I used and what I did:

5 tomatoes

1 red onion

1/2 lime

3 cloves garlic

1 jalapeno

2 skinny chili peppers (I don't know what they're called!)

about 1/2 cup cilantro

I chopped everything up--other than the lime, I just squeezed that in the bowl--and stirred it all together. that's it! It's a bit spicy. I should have probably just used two peppers, but now I know.

For the soup, Tomato Basil Soup, I followed a Betty Crocker recipe I've made before. Only last time, I used canned tomatoes as it suggests as an easier way to do things.

This is the recipe I followed. It seems a bit unusual that it includes carrots, but they give it a good flavor.

I had to peel the tomatoes before putting them in the soup, which I had never done before. I brought a big pot of water to a boil, dropped in each tomato, and cooked them 5-7 minutes. I took them out with a slotted spoon and let them cool before peeling them. For some of them, the skin came right off. For others, I had to poke the skin with a knife and peel it off. I was supposed to seed the tomatoes, too, but that seemed to be too difficult, and I think the soup turned out just fine.

I stuck it in the freezer right away, since it's not exactly soup season and I figure I'll want to have it more into fall and winter. The taste tests came out pretty good, though!

Thai Chicken with Basil

Nate found this recipe through an app, called "What's For Dinner," on his phone. It used two things we had overflowing in our garden--basil and red chiles.

This recipe for Thai Basil Chicken was good. It didn't look nearly like the picture looks, but it was tasty, and we'd make it again.

Here is the recipe. And here is what we did differently:

-Added some additional soy sauce and fish sauce toward the end (we thought it was supposed to be more saucy. Not so, apparently!).

-Use 4 cloves of garlic, not 3 (Nate was the one who primarily made this meal, and he often goes crazy on the garlic).

-We added about 1 cup of chopped orange, red and green bell peppers to get some extra veggies in.

-We didn't scrape out the seeds or membranes from the chiles.

-We ended up chopping the basil, rather than leaving it whole, because the big pieces seemed a bit overwhelming.

The dish was spicy, but not overly spicy. We served the chicken with a side of pan-roasted potatoes.

It was kind of a weird choice, but we had them from the CSA and wanted to use them up. Next time, I'd probably make rice with it as it had a bit of liquid to it.

Produce, Produce and More Produce

We got our second CSA box this week. I get really excited about getting the box each Friday! It's fun to come up with recipes based on the produce in the box.

This week's was a lot of the same as last week, like asparagus, green garlic, radishes and and rhubarb--plus spinach, one leek and red lettuce.

Also, I did some planting last weekend.

I planted three herb plants: basil, cilantro and dill.

And I planted a few hot peppers, including jalapenos and habaneros (I can't think of the third right now ...).

I also planted a tomato in a Topsy Turvy. Last year, the jalapenos and the basil did really well, and, to my surprise, the tomato. I hope everything turns out well this year!

I can't wait to get to the Saturday Farmer's Markets soon. We frequent the West Allis Farmer's Market. This year, I really want to check out the Fondy Farmer's Market as well as the South Shore Farmer's Market in Bay View. I've heard really good things about both markets. And there will be a new one nearby: Tosa Farmer's Market.