Our Fra Diavolo Sauce from the Garden

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

OK, I realize this was not supposed to be the next post, but here it is anyway. And it's amended from yesterday, courtesy of my hubby, who put extra stuff in that I either didn't remember, or he did without my notice!

Last weekend we made pasta sauce from the tomatoes and peppers in our garden - not a lot, but about 5 quarts. So here's how we did it:

20 Cloves of Garlic, slivered, finely chopped or minced
1 Large Onion, chopped or diced into 1/4 - 1 inch pieces
Sweet Peppers - 1 each, Red and Green Bell, chopped or diced into 1/4 - 1 inch pieces
1 Italian Roaster Pepper, chopped or diced into 1/4 - 1 inch pieces
Hot Peppers - 1 each, Hungarian Yellow, Cayenne, Jalapeno, Portugal, Cherry Bomb; minced (with gloves on!)
6 Tbsp Olive Oil
18 Fresh Tomatoes of various kinds (red Roma, yellow Roma, Cherokee, Heirloom, Beefsteak), skinned and chopped or diced into 1/4 - 1 inch pieces
2 6 oz. cans of Tomato Paste
1/4 cup Marsala wine
6 Tbsp Dried Basil (this is a little difficult to judge because hubby was crushing by hand, but he's confident of this amount)
3/4 cup Knorr chicken stock (Completely dissolve 1 cube in 1 cup of water; add 3/4 of the cup of stock to the sauce. This step is, of course, optional for vegetarians.)
1/2 - 1 tsp Sugar (to taste)
1/4 - 1/2 tsp Salt (optional, to taste)
4 Bay Leaves, whole
1 cup Water (optional, if the sauce is too thick)

Skin the tomatoes ahead of time - you can blanch them in boiling water until the skins start to peel, which only takes about a minute. We let them cool off a bit, so we don't have to peel and chop hot tomatoes.

Preheat your large (10 quart) saucepan, no oil. Once the pan is hot, add the olive oil and stir to coat the bottom. Sauté garlic, onions, and all peppers in the olive oil. (For a milder Fra Diavolo, add the hot peppers a few minutes after you start the sauté process.) When the onions start to become transparent, add the tomatoes, wine and basil. Let this mixture boil until the tomatoes start to become less chunky and more mushy - until they start making a lot more liquid. Add 1 can of tomato paste, and stir until completely blended. Then add teaspoonfuls from the other can as needed. Let this all cook together about another 15-20 minutes - long enough to cook up your pasta of choice.

Obviously, this is a garden sauce - what's in it depends on what's ripe. You can always go to a farm market (in season) and pick out different things, but when it comes down to it, it's all tomatoes and peppers, so you can get creative or not! And the different colors are cool to use in salsa, but in sauce they all tend to become uniformly sauce colored. :o)

So have fun, and remember to warn your friends and family that this is a spicy one!

Veggie Garden, Round Two

Saturday, September 6, 2008

I didn't know I would have a round two this year, getting started so late, but apparently Mother Earth had a surprise for me.

We have eight tomato plants growing in my compost pile, two of which already have flowers on them. So we have a round two! The peas were really good this year (although kinda ugly), we're still getting green beans, and two of the late romaine are done and will make yummy salads this week. I love growing stuff!

I also love that my 3 1/2 year old loves to eat veggies out of the garden. She'll only help me pick peas if she gets to eat the ones she picks, but yesterday she had our cherry tomatoes, green beans (raw, of course) and raspberries for lunch. (And green Greek olives with garlic, but obviously we didn't grow those...) We have the only kid who asks for green beans at the grocery store instead of a cookie. It's very cool!

I'll have to pot the tomatoes. They won't last - our summer is almost over here. The temp is going into the 40's this weekend. Hear that, guys? If you still have stuff outside, cover it up.

The older tomatoes are gangbusters - we made chili this past weekend, and we'll have enough for sauce next weekend. BTW, when we make a pot of something, it's usually a huge pot (20 qt.), so technically I have enough tomatoes now for sauce, just a much smaller batch. :o)

So that's my garden update...next time: Food for the Serious Gamer.

My History Addiction, a.k.a. The Endless "WHY"

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

That's how it all started, really. There were so many things going on in the world - the various Middle East conflicts, the Troubles (yes, it was the 80's) - when I started to realize that I had no idea how these conflicts or situations had even come about, let alone why. The more I read about any given area, ethnicity or nation, the further back I had to go into that subject's history to find the root.

This, as I'm sure you can imagine, is a well that has no bottom. I got sucked in.

I started with Ireland, and what the deal was with the Six Counties. Why was there this exaggerated sectarianism? We have a great many religions in this country, and we all have to just accept that people follow different ones. So why didn't the Irish? I had to study the political and social systems of Northern Ireland. But the issues seemed (on one side) to stem from the presence of the British government and army. So I had to go back further, to the Irish fight for independence from Great Britain. But why did they want independence enough to fight for it, not once, but in many uprisings spanning a few centuries?

And that's just one country.

I've read about the creation of (the country of) Israel, and the 6 Day War; but I had to go back and read about the history of European and Turkish interaction with the various tribes of Arabs, and the westernization of the Arab world. (T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom gives an enlightening and odd insight - he's so obviously British, but really tried to understand the Arab mindset.) I've barely scratched the surface on this one.

But it did lead me to World War I. So how in the world could the assassination of one man lead to the most horrific of circumstances? I covered the history of Serbia and Bosnia, the Austrian-Hungarians, the formation of Imperial Germany, and then Kaiser Wilhelm II (grandson of Queen Victoria - wow, look up that bloodline). I took a side track into British naval development, and read about Jackie Fisher, David Beatty, and John Jellicoe, and a few of the major (naval) battles of the war. And now I'm on Winston Churchill's "The World Crisis; 1911 - 1918". Did you know part of that war was fought in Africa and in Asia? I do now...and I'll get to both African and Asian history too, eventually. :o)

Oh, and I'm reading about D-Day, and the various beach heads - the plans vs. the actual landings. Onward to World War II - my next project is the war in the Pacific, which I know almost nothing about, and Japan. The project after that is the Nixon years, which will get me to Vietnam. The one after that - Napoleon.

So why ask why? Why not?