Nobody doesn’t like a vine ripe tomato
When you have green tomatoes amongst those ruby gems, don’t forsake them. World cuisines take very well to unripened fruits as a staple food.
Green papaya and unripened mango are also served up in many cuisines. All these fruit bodies share the same flavor: undeveloped “summer squash” like flavor. Yet, they provide sustenance and a waste-not want-not value to the cuisine.
Fried green tomatoes are standard Southern comfort food. Green tomatoes may have a bland flavor, but they come into focus dredged and fried. Green tomatoes retain their shape and texture in a pickling brine. Then spices and herbs lift them in any variety of condiment dishes. Green Tomato Hints
Don’t go with partially green tomatoes. You want all green, firm, unripened tomatoes. Tomatoes with streaks of red or hints of blush are better to continue to ripen. All green tomatoes can be cut and will hold their shape as a pickle.
Green tomatoes are showing up at supermarkets year round now. They are a great source for making Mediterranean antipastos on demand.
You can substitute tomatillos, the small Mexican “tomato.” Peel the husk and wash the sticky film off the fruit. Tomatillos can also be cut to size.
Antipasto - Two Ways
This is our one-of-a-kind meal maker recipe using green tomatoes along with a secret additive; brine cured olives and a little of the olive brine. I miss this the most when I empty the jar. This becomes a main worker bee in the fridge. Out it comes as an antipasto, as a topper on salads, as a quick toss with warm or cold noodles.
Green Tomato Antipasto
2 Qts /1.9 L
Turn garden fresh veggies into a quick base for pasta AND garden salads. Toss our pickled antipasto with dressed lettuce or add to pasta with a splash of oil to make a main course dish. - Recipe by Wendy Jackson
*Tomatillos are members of the tomato family. Find in ethnic and larger supermarkets.
Plan on 2 LBS. total for your mix of vegetables
green tomatoes, 12 oz. (or tomatillos*), chopped
snap beans, 12 oz. trimmed, steamed 2-3 minutes to crisp tender stage
onion, 2 cups, coarse chopped
garlic, 1 TBS., sliced
olives, pitted, Kalamata, 1 cup, halved
banana peppers, 1 cup, 1/4-inch thick rounds or other mild type
dried tomatoes, 1/2 cup, thin strips
Italian seasoning, 1 TBS. other Mediterranean spice combo of choice
1 Soak and trim green beans, then steam for 2-3 minutes and shock with cold water. They should be al dente.
2 Prep veggies and toss in a large bowl.
3 Add spices to a clean 2-quart jar and load the mixture, tamping lightly as you go.
4 Go to Page 8 and complete the instructions.
After Fermentation: Drizzle with olive oil. On occasion add fresh, chopped Mediterranean herbs, some capers, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Toss with pasta, or dressed salad greens, or as a topper for cooked grains.
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Antipasto Verde - 1 qt.
- Recipe by B. Hettig
This version came out of my season ending garden. It was a proud and magisterial display.
Plan on one pound total of these garden stalwarts:
Green Tomatoes or Tomatillos, bite sized pieces
Green Bell Pepper, bite sized pieces
Cucumber, (see below)
Green Snap Beans, trimmed
Jalapeños and/or Banana peppers, bite sized pieces
Brine cured green olives and a little brine
Italian herb blend, 1-1/2 tsp.
If using cukes, lightly peel, slice into quarters down the length, remove seeds, slice into chips, place in colander and sprinkle heavily with salt; leave for 30 minutes, then rinse well.
If green beans are mature, blanch in salted water for a few minutes and rinse in cold water.
Make a standard brine (page 8 in instruction book or review video) and load a one-quart jar. When fermented, serve with a splash of olive oil, fresh chopped herbs, crumbled feta or goat cheese cheese.
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Ludwig Knaus - Mud Pies 1887
I well remember childhood days making mud pies, readying them with my playmates for imaginary ovens. Good, rich double chocolate mud pies. We were dirty kids back when that was an honest title.
Now our lives have been made clean—squeaky clean—with all sorts of disinfectant soaps and pasteurized, microbe-free meals. In the following excerpt you will learn how we made life-long friends with our mud pie microbes and live-cultured foods—they handed us key lessons on keeping our immune system strong and humming along.
New York Times
June 20, 2012
Dirtying Up Our Diets, by Jeff D. Leach
[excerpted... enjoy the entire article]
Increasing evidence suggests that the alarming rise in allergic and autoimmune disorders during the past few decades is at least partly attributable to our lack of exposure to microorganisms that once covered our food and us. As nature’s blanket, the potentially pathogenic and benign microorganisms associated with the dirt that once covered every aspect of our preindustrial day guaranteed a time- honored co-evolutionary process that established “normal” background levels and kept our bodies from overreacting to foreign bodies. This research suggests that reintroducing some of the organisms from the mud and water of our natural world would help avoid an overreaction of an otherwise healthy immune response that results in such chronic diseases as Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis and a host of allergic disorders....
And for most of us in the industrialized world, the microbial cleansing continues throughout life. Nature’s dirt floor has been replaced by tile; our once soiled and sooted bodies and clothes are cleaned almost daily; our muddy water is filtered and treated; our rotting and fermenting food has been chilled; and the cowshed has been neatly tucked out of sight. While these improvements in hygiene and sanitation deserve applause, they have inadvertently given rise to a set of truly human-made diseases....
For all of human history, this learning was driven by our near- continuous exposure from birth and throughout life to organisms as diverse as mycobacteria from soil and food; .... Our ability to regulate our allergic and inflammatory responses to these co-evolved companions is further compromised by imbalances in the gut microbiota from overzealous use of antibiotics (especially in early childhood) and modern dietary choices....
As humans have evolved, so, too, have our diseases. Autoimmune disease affects an estimated 50 million people at an annual cost of more than $100 billion. And the suffering and monetary costs are sure to grow. Maybe it’s time we talk more about human ecology when we speak of the broader environmental and ecological concerns of the day....
As we move deeper into a “postmodern” era of squeaky-clean food and hand sanitizers at every turn, we should probably hug our local farmers’ markets a little tighter. They may represent our only connection with some “old friends” we cannot afford to ignore.
Jeff D. Leach is a science and archaeology writer and founder of the Human Food Project.
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To my thinking, make and consume fresh brine pickles; we can have our diet and our dirt and eat it too! Fresh, raw ingredients—crazy with living cultures found throughout Nature—are made for pennies a serving. I call this your ferment farmacy.
And with a broader dietary stroke consider eating a variety of live-culture ferments (not fermented THEN pasteurized) as a regular way of meeting up with the external mates of your internal microbial garden.
Bill Hettig All rights reserved ©2012