cooking and canning

Summer has come and gone, still hot, but school starts for most tomorrow. I've been canning all summer. It started out with strawberry jam. We picked strawberries in Fredericksburg. Then my dad's garden overflowed with jalapenos and mine with tomatoes so I started making salsa. My uncle gave me 3 bags of frozen fresh picked figs so fig preserves were on the menu. Then we went back to Fredericksburg with our church preschool group and picked peaches...so you guessed it peach preserves. My last attempt at canning something is ZACUSCA! It's a Romanian spread make of roasted red peppers, roasted eggplant, tomato bouillon and cooked onions.

Chipotle Salsa

10 roasted jalapenos (in the oven or on a wrought iron skillet til there are black)

2 large cans of whole tomatoes

2 large onions

3-4 garlic cloves

salt

pepper

garlic powder

onion powder

oregano

parsley

Put everything in the food processor til it's the consistency you want, then cook it in a large pot on a slow boil and can it.

Fresh tomato Salsa

10 blistered jalapenos

8-10 overripe tomatoes (if your tomatoes aren't overripe and juicy, then add a small can of tomatoes to the pot)

2 large onions

3-4 garlic cloves

salt

pepper

garlic powder

onion powder

oregano

parsley

Put everything in the food processor til it's the consistency you want, then cook it in a large pot on a slow boil and can it. (Don't overcook fresh salsa...just a quick boil, then can it...not sure how long it will keep...we eat it fast and give it away so not to spoil.)

Salsa Ranchera

10 jalapenos

4 tomatillos (that's all I had from my uncle)

8 overripe tomatoes

1 large can of tomatoes

2 large onions

3-4 garlic cloves

salt

pepper

garlic powder

onion powder

oregano

parsley

This is a cooked salsa. I put everything in my dutch oven first and cooked it, til then onions were soft, the tomatillos melted away, the tomato skin came off (which I discarded) etc...it was cooked. I put the hot mixture in my food processor (maybe that's what broke it! I doubt it. A plastic piece with a screw broke off so it leaked...a LOT!) You could process the mix and then cook it...but it's easier to see the 'doneness' of whole vegetables in my opinion.

After it's cooked, can it.

Each recipe makes about 8 small (8 oz jar) or 4 med-large jars.

Fresh Figs from my uncles garden...he gave me bags, so I made preserves. I used a recipe from epicurean.com
http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/15868/fig-preserves.html
I used half the sugar they called for and it was still very sweet and amazingly good!!!!

Here's the recipe...15 small red and yellow bell peppers roasted (you can use the jarred roasted red peppers, but much more expensive)...
9 eggplant (they were small, farm fresh from the Pearl market) roasted
2 onions chopped in food processor
Olive oil
Tomato Bouillon (I used one can of crushed tomatoes and one can water)
I roasted both the eggplant and peppers on cookie sheets in the oven on 425. Took the stems out of peppers, scraped the flesh of the eggplant and blended it in a food processor.

While eggplant and peppers are roasting, I put olive oil in the bottom of my dutch oven, added onions and browned them. Add tomato bouillon, salt, pepper, (my friend said to add bay leaf but I didn't have any) I added a little parsley, after eggplant and peppers are cooked and chopped in food processor, add to tomato mixture in pot. Cook for a while then spoon into jars. I think my peppers were a little charred, but I'm not sure that will change the flavor...