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Fresh tomatoes in abundance – I’ve been planting more and more every summer just to have a big surplus to convert into tomato leather.

Portable, durable, delicious and likely pretty good for you since my recipe is a combination of tomatoes, herbs, spices, alliums and olive oil.

First a little about tools:

• I have a 9-tray Excalibur dehydrator with a timer. If you get one, don’t forget dryer sheets. I got 2 sets, one for sweet and one for savory.
• Food processor or immersion blender. Both will work, but I’ve discovered that the immersion blender is a huge time saver and way less mess to clean up.
• I source a lot of my spices from My Spice Sage. So far the quality and service are both excellent.

Let’s get started. Just so you know where we’re headed, we’re going to make a delicious tomato sauce and then put it in the dehydrator. Simple, yes?

I put about 13 oz (by weight) of sauce on each tray. I use about 1 lb of chopped onions, so we’ll need around 7 lbs of cleaned, cored fresh tomatoes. Math.

Herbs and spices – I don’t really measure. It’s preferable to be a little excessive as the dehydration process knocks down some of the flavors. Exception – salt – dehydration concentrates the salt, so I do measure salt.

Mise en Place:

• 2 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2-3 nice sized cloves of fresh garlic, peeled and minced.
• Couple small palmfuls of crushed red pepper. Adjust for your heat tolerance. If you make some that’s too hot for you, I’m here to take it off your hands…
• 2 medium onions, peeled and chopped. I am for about 16 oz.
• Couple nice sprigs of fresh sage, thyme, rosemary, and basil. Strip the rosemary leaves and chop with the herbs.
• 2 big palmfuls of fennel seeds. I’ve not yet found an upper limit for fennel seeds.
• palmful of paprika
• 2 tsp salt (could be less)
• ~7 lbs of ripe tomatoes, cored and halved

 

 

• Put a suitably sized heavy-bottomed, acid-resistant (I use stainless steel) pan on medium heat.
• Add the olive oil and crushed pepper.
• When the crushed pepper starts to sizzle, drop in the minced garlic. Saute for 30 seconds or so. Don’t burn the garlic or it will be bitter.
• Drop in the onions and saute for about 20 minutes, stirring at least every 5 minutes. You’re looking for a nice caramelization.

Getting there:

After the onions are soft and caramelized, add the tomatoes, herbs, spices and salt. Simmer, stirring every few minutes until the tomatoes are broken down and soft – usually about 30-40 minutes for me.

Now it’s time for either the food processor or the immersion blender.

Food processor – cool before processing. Hot food and plastic are not a great combination.

Immersion blender – hot is fine, I do it right on the stove. The sauce can be a little chunky, but big pieces will result in uneven dehydration.

Taste your sauce – it’ll likely seem heavy on herbs and spices and light on salt. This is OK and what we’re aiming for.

Time to chill – let the sauce come down to nearly room temperature. If I’m in a hurry, I put ice cubes and water in the sink and set my wok in it.

Next – measure out ~13 oz (by weight) on your food scale, pour onto the dryer sheets, distribute to near the edges and level out. You might have to shake the tray a little to level it out. Again, you’re looking for even dehydration and thick spots will take longer than thin spots.

Fill the dehydrator, set it for vegetable drying (on mine, that’s about 125 degrees) and let it go. Typically is taking me about 9 hours. Check every 3 hours and rotate / shift trays. There are hotter and cooler spots in the dehydrator.

When the leather is visibly dry and doesn’t smoosh when you push on it (‘leathery’), it’s probably done. Pull the sheets, let them rest (per your dehydrator’s instructions), peel off and store.

We eat them out of hand or on in pieces on crackers and goat cheese. Sometime soon I’m going to try letting them be sauce for noodles on a backpacking trip.

Too much sauce? We pour leftovers in a silcone muffin pan and freeze them for later.

After they freeze, pop them out and put them in a bag for later.

 

So delicious. The onions are the star of the show here, so don’t skimp.

Mise en Place

• 2 strips uncured bacon
• 2 medium onions (fist sized)
• 1 Tbsp ground organic chipotle powder. Smoky heat.
• 12 organic eggs
• Organic whole milk
• 2 organic tomatoes, hopefully home grown
• salt
• 10 inch fry pan with lid and oven proof handle
• kitchen towel
• patience

Procedure

This is going to take a while as we want to fully develop the flavors of all the ingredients – and not overcook the bottom of the frittata.

• Over low-medium heat, dust the bacon in the fry pan with chipotle (reserve most of the spice for later) and cook until crispy. If the bacon fat smokes, the heat is too high. I find 6 minutes on each side works.
• While the bacon is cooking, coarsely chop the onions. I aim for 16-20 oz chopped onion.
• When the bacon is done, remove the strips and set aside. Put the onions in the pan in all that lovely bacon fat, dust with the rest of the chipotle and cover. Cook until the onions are clear; better yet, get some carmelization. I go 7 minutes, then stir well, then 7 minutes more.
• While the onions are cooking, crack the dozen eggs into a medium bowl, add a splash of whole milk and whisk. Wash and slice the tomatoes.
• When the onions are done cooking, use kitchen shears to cut the bacon strips into small pieces and add to the pan. Stir in the egg mixture until all the ingredients are well distributed.
• Cover and cook over medium-low heat until the bottom is partially set. I find this to take another 7 minutes or so. Watch for egg bubbles; I pop them with a table knife.
• Turn off the burner.
• Set the top oven rack so that it’s 4 inches or so from the broiler, set the broiler on high, cover the egg mixture with the sliced tomatoes, add a little salt and place under the broiler. Cook until browned on top.
• When the smoke alarms go off because you forgot to turn the range hood fan on, run back and forth with the kitchen towel (remember the kitchen towel?) waving at the smoke alarms to get them to shut up.
• Watch out for tripping over your panicked cat, unhinged at the spectacle of waving towels and screaming alarms.
• Once the frittata has browned, remove from the broiler (turn off the broiler) and set aside for a few minutes.
• Slice and serve.

“Frittata” translates roughly into “egg cake” – so there are endless possible variations. One really tasty addition here would be to cut the kernels off a fresh cob of sweet corn and add them with the chopped bacon and egg mixture.

I’ve yet to try anything chipotle I didn’t love. I’ve bought chipotle powder by the pound and recently tried buying whole chipotles (now by the pound as well). My favorite source is myspicesage on the internet (good to know if you live in the boondocks).

My process has two major steps –  1) cook the beans and whole chiles; roast the onions and fresh jalapenos then 2) assembly.

Day One (or in the morning)

Weigh out 1 lb pinto beans; wash and put in slow cooker. Add 8 whole chipotle peppers, 2–3 peeled garlic cloves and 3 or 4 other dried chiles of whatever variety you have lying around. Cover with water about 2x as deep as the solids, cook on high setting until the beans are tender –  usually takes about 6 hours for me. I start testing them about hour 5 and make sure there is enough water to cover everything.

Set oven to 375 F. Halve and peel 2 large onions, leaving on the roots. I cut them into about 4 sections, still joined at the roots. Wash 4–6 fresh jalapenos. Put in a baking dish, roast for an hour. Your kitchen is going to acquire a beautiful odor.

Day Two (or when the beans are ready)

I use my wok, but any large pot with good heat distribution will do. Have at hand:

• Ground cumin
• 2 cups or so of riced roasted tomatoes
• 3 pounds of ground turkey (probably any ground meat will work)
• The roasted aromatics
• The cooked pintos and chiles
• Salt. Non-iodized if you’re planning on canning.

Chop the roasted onions (time to get rid of the roots) and jalapenos (remove the stems. Don’t remove the seeds – too much flavor there). I like them rough chopped for a rustic look.

Put the onions and jalapenos in your pot over medium heat. Break up the ground meat over the veg, cover and cook 15 mins or so. Open, stir, recover and cook until the turkey is cooked through.

While this is happening, rice the roasted tomatoes. Pick the chiles and garlic out of the beans. Mush the garlic. Remove the stems from the chiles and tear them apart. Again, I like it rustic.

Once the meat is cooked, pour the tomato / chile / garlic mix over the meat. Add a big palmful of ground cumin. Pour in the cooked pintos. Heat through, stir, let simmer for 15 mins or so. Salt to taste.

Dig in. I’ve made this over and over and it always comes out around 26 calories per ounce.

Paleo? Leave out the beans. You’ll need to braise and soften the chipotles somehow.

We first had home made roasted nuts courtesy of our friend Amy – so good we had to try them ourselves.

A few words about spices – spices are Real Food ® and therefore have a shelf life – if you use cinnamon and nutmeg from those bottles leftover from the 20th Century, the results will not be the same – use only the freshest spices.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

• 1/4 c sugar – or less turns out OK for us
• 50 g egg whites (about 1/4 cup)
• 1/2 tsp salt (or less)
• 1 whole nutmeg seed, grated with a fine microplane
• 1 heaping Tbsp of ground cinnamon

Mix this all together in a large bowl – this mixture will be used to coat the nuts.

• 2 lb of raw nuts – my favorite mix is 1 lb walnuts + 1 lb almonds. I imagine any two pounds of nuts and seeds you can throw together will turn out fine.

Use a spatula to turn the nuts, coating them well. Turn out onto 2 cookie sheets and pat down to a single layer.

Put the cookie sheets into the 250 degree oven for 1/2 hour. Remove and stir the nuts. Put back in the oven for another 1/2 hour. Remove and cool. Ready to eat.

Bonus! 3 cups of roasted spiced nuts run through the food processor until ground to a paste makes about a pint of the best nut butter I’ve found…

Our friend Amy introduced us to this – simple and amazing. Dribble or dip.

Original link.

My version:

• 2 medium-small sweet potatoes
• 1 lb uncured bacon – OPTIONAL
• 2 Tbsp organic coconut oil
• 1 Tbsp chipotle powder – more or less according to your wimpiness

Preheat oven to 350F. Clean the sweet potatoes, remove any uglies (I like them unpeeled) then cut them lengthwise into quarters. Then cut into bites that your 1/2 bacon slices will wrap around.

Melt coconut oil over low-heat and stir in chipotle chili powder. Toss the potatoes in the spiced, melted coconut oil to coat.

Cut the bacon slices in half. Wrap each sweet potato bite with a half slice of bacon, and use a toothpick to hold the bacon in place.

Place on a baking sheet and bake for 45 minutes, turning once about halfway through.

These are done when the bacon is crispy and the sweet potatoes are fork-tender. Remove from heat and let cool (but  not cold) before serving.

Enjoy…