Late Fall Ramble

We had a hard frost the first week of November that withered most of the garden plants but left a number of unripened tomatoes.  Three of them were turning color so we put them in a brown paper bag with an apple.  The apple gives off ethylene gas which hastens ripening and worked well enough to give us a few end of season grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches and a tomato salad.  They weren't as good as vine ripened but still tasty and left us feeling a little smug to have cheated the cold a bit.

Once washed, we had a meal of fried green tomatoes in a cornmeal batter 

dotted with Louisiana Hot Sauce inspired by one of our favorite cookbooks,

White Trash Cooking.

I bought a pickling mixture at the grocery store and processed several pounds of green

tomatoes with it.  They got very mushy and tasted disgusting.  That is now known as the Mal-Pickle Experiment and became a component in our compost pile.

I did find a good recipe that made sweet bread and butter type pickled tomatoes

and put up several pints for later.

Different subject:   Cooks Illustrated, a cooking magazine Frank turned me on to years ago, came up with a bread making method that produces a magnificent crust, one that the "crust lady" in our house highly approves.  A dutch oven and it's lid is heated in the oven at 500 degrees for 20 minutes, then removed.  Quickly put a loaf on parchment paper into the dutch oven and cover with the lid, return to the oven reducing the temperature to 425 for 20 to 30 minutes.  Remove the lid and continue baking for another 20 minutes.  Remove the loaf and place it on a cookie rack to cool.

Remember those very hot Thai chili peppers (lower right) that we grew this year? 

I use them with the hottest parts, the seeds and inner membranes removed.

 I sent a large bag of them to Florida with Amy's folks to give to Dave Sylvester, who loves all things hot, as a thank you for the Tuscan tomato seeds he had given us .  Gordy said Dave was very pleased and proceed to sit down with a martini and eat every pepper one after another popping them in his mouth like M & Ms!  Wow!