Seventy Nine Jars

The haul.

Canned tomatoes are a staple in our home and we share this culinary habit with our friends and neighbors Fred and Ulla. For the past several years we have collaborated for an afternoon on putting up a year's worth. This summer we began to ration the last of 2012's jars in both homes so we decided to up the quantity. We bought and canned 3 bushels. This yielded 80 quart jars, one of which broke during processing. It might not look like much but it took the better part of a late afternoon and evening.

For those of you who have never canned your own tomatoes, here's how it goes. Roma tomatoes must be blanched, chilled, peeled, and packed into scalded jars with a hot liquid, capped, and then processed in a water bath to seal the jars and kill off any active bacteria which could cause food borne illness in storage.

The peeling is the most tedious part. Three bushels is about 1200 tomatoes. Fred, Ulla and I tackled the blanching and peeling while Amy, leading the charge, juiced an additional bushel of beefsteaks and prepared and packed the jars. We had two turkey fryers going outside to handle the blanching and processing. Truth be told, processing takes the longest. Between the two cookers we could process 15 jars at a time, 35 minutes to a batch, plus time to come to temp and time to cool. Luckily, once the jars are packed there is lots of down time. So we had dinner and drinks, conversed comfortably as neighbors do, and waited, occasionally responding to a timer by lazily rising to take jars out of the water or put fresh in. The sun went down and Ulla began to fade. Soon she was gone and we decided the dirty dishes could wait til morning. Not too long after that, Amy ran out of gas and Fred and I brought out the whisky to ride out the remainder. It was a good day, a day that makes the bond between our two households one of great depth.

Fred was telling me that he went into a mild panic as he sat on an airplane on his way home form Denmark thinking about the many things massing on his very busy horizon, one of which was tomatoes. He worriedly thought to himself, "I have no plans for tomatoes" and in Fred's world this is not okay. He would spend an entire winter cooking greens, pasta, pizza, braised meat, BBQ sauce and salsa, with no tomatoes in the pantry. An entire year without something in his pantry he always has but never takes for granted. Sure you could just buy them, but that is not where the bar has been set. And Fred is not one to lower his bar. Nor are Amy and I.

So on a very busy Labor Day weekend we canned tomatoes in lieu of the beach or a hike or dinner out.  But it does not feel like a sacrifice because these are the activities that the make the hill the hill. Fred and I spoke for some time about how much we love it here once the whisky was flowing. We talked about how 122nd Avenue which rolls over the crest of the hill and in front of our homes seems to split the weather coming off the lake like a knife: look north and you might see churning grey clouds in the distance ready to unleash a summer storm, and to the south, across the road, a billow of high white clouds on bright blue skies blushed pink with the setting sun. We talked about how these tomatoes are an irreplaceable piece of our existence here. We looked forward to watching the pigs chow down on the peels and pulp that collected as we prepped.

Canned tomatoes of good quality can be bought but they are very expensive. We can get very good tomatoes locally if we haven't grown our own, and taking control over the canning process can yield even better results. This year, I finally talked everyone into investing a bit more time and money into packing the tomatoes in juice. I thought this would have a few benefits. Normally, home canned tomatoes are packed in water, which is poured off before use. I thought after all this effort it would be nice if the entire contents of the jar were useable. Also, when you pack in water the pH becomes a concern. If the pH is too low, safety demands the jars must be processed for much longer (lowering their quality) or pressure canned, which is interminably slow (we only have one pressure canner and it only fits a few jars). Adding acidic tomato juice - verified this year by a pH meter, an expensive but very worthy investment for anyone who cans, cures, or ferments - can eliminate the need for long or higher temperature processing. It can also eliminate the need for lemon juice or citric acid which can alter the flavor, color, and texture of canned tomatoes. It is vitally important to know that acidity of the tomatoes and their medium in the jar is below 4.6 to ensure safe storage. Under no circumstances should you consider shorter processing times or eliminating additional acidification without confirming a safe pH. The most compelling argument for packing in juice in my mind, though, is flavor. When you pack in water, some of the tomato flavor and color will be lost to it. Tomato juice will enhance, not degrade the flavor of the fruit in the jar.

As always, the proof is in the pudding. It will be a few weeks before we will crack open this year's tomatoes and see what's what. If this step yields good results, maybe next year we will add a little alcohol to the juice. Some tomato flavors are soluble only in alcohol, which explains why a little red wine in a tomato sauce does so much. So perhaps starting in the jar could have a profound positive effect on their flavor.

At. St. Anthony, we are laying the foundation for the best possible canned tomato, starting on the farm. We are discussing varieties that grow well in the north, prepping the soil they grow in with the ash from our wood ovens to simulate the "shadow of Vesuvius" where the San Marzano, the king of canned tomatoes grows, trellising, handling. It is sometimes hard to imagine a fruit so badly treated in modern cooking. Tomatoes are truly seasonal, but are still too ubiquitous throughout the year. They are often refrigerated which means death to their flavor. Proper ripeness is crucial, but often overlooked. Acidity is not just necessary to the safety of canned tomatoes, but also its culinary value. Bright, sharp acidity is the cornerstone of great sauces and braises and the backdrop that showcases the best a tomato has to offer flavor wise.

The lessons we have learned from year to year canning on our back porches will certainly help us get there at St. Anthony. More importantly, these cooking proclivities borne naturally form our love of the hill will light the path toward our discovery of the cuisine of this place on earth. This is our guiding principle, our mission: to cook from our hearts and our home. I will know that we've strayed from our vision if the food in the restaurant would seem out of place in our home. In some important ways, the hill will be looming over St. Anthony with a watchful eye. One could do worse.