Sliced Tomatoes Plus

The simplest things in life are sometimes the best. This one is quick and easy.

Ingredients should be cold and crisp (well ... not the spices or vinegar):

• A handful of whole fresh spinach leaves
• 1 large ripe tomato - cut two or three slices just shy of 1/2 inch (1 cm) thick out of the middle.
• 1 cucumber - Cut 2 inch length(s) from the fruit, peel about 1/2 of it, cut into 1/4 " square strips lengthwise.
• 5 or 6 Kalamata (greek) olives (or whatever kind you have)
• Feta cheese - a block about 1" x 1" x 1.5" (2 cm x 2 cm x 3 cm)
• 1/2 tsp dried basil (or fresh equivalent)
• balsamic and red wine vinegar
• salt
• pepper

Put the spinach leaves on a dinner plate to form a bed for the tomatoes.
The tomato slices go on top of that (1 layer thick)
Sprinkle the tomatoes with the basil, a little salt and pepper.
Sprinkle cucumber strips over the tomatoes and sprinkle a little salt (or seasoning salt) on them.
Pile up the olives to the side of the plate.
Crumble the Feta over the top. You want enough so that every bite has some of that salty, sour goodness in it.
Pour balsamic vinegar around the edges of the tomatoes but not on top of the salad. Pour the red wine vinegar, but only about half as much, around the same way. DO NOT put vinegar on top of the vegetables but don't obsess if a little gets on them anyway.

Eat and enjoy immediately before the spinach gets soggy..

Salsa

Good tomatoes = Good salsa. That's the trick. Note that you can play mix and match with the peppers to make it milder or hotter. This makes about 4 cups.

• 3 lbs whole fresh tomatoes (Roma are best.)
• 1 med purple onion, halved
• 2 fresh green chiles (anaheim or hatch or even poblano)
• 2 fresh jalapeño peppers, halved
• 1 Serrano pepper
• 1 habañero pepper (also called Scotch Bonnet)
• 2 limes, halved

Put these on the grill when it's nice and hot. (or you can use the oven broiler or a propane torch) Cook turning as needed to blacken the peppers and tomato skins and make black marks on the onions and limes.

Remove the stems. Only the stems from the peppers and tomatoes.

Put in a blender together and purée:

• A third of the tomatoes
• All the peppers
• 2 tsp chopped garlic (2-3 cloves)
• Squeeze in the lime juice.
• 1/3 cup fresh cilantro chopped
• 2 Tbsp chopped parsley (or dried)
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp powdered cocoa
• 2 tsp sugar

Mix together in a bowl

• The rest of the tomatoes, chopped
• The onion, diced
• The contents of the blender

Stir together and adjust the salt and sugar. Maybe add some garlic powder or some more parsley. Add black pepper if you want.

Serve with chips.

Apple Butter

Wrote this one down and put it in my recipe box on a 3x5 card in 1974. I must have been three years old at the time. It was adapted, as I remember, from several recipes including one in a freezing and canning cookbook one of my coworkers gave me. It may have been the guy that told about how he got arrested for robbing a gas station. It's hard to get a good job when you're three.

Apple Butter is spread on toast like any jelly or jam. There was a time when my wife would make homemade bread. A slice of bread, fresh from the oven, spread with homemade Apple Butter ... it's got to be like that in heaven

A word of warning: It takes almost 24 hours to make Apple Butter and your house will smell wonderful. Exactly how long depends on how juicy the apples are. (Try to control that.) Figure out the times to fit your schedule. So it can cook it overnight and you finish up on your day off. Or cook all day while you are at work and count on staying up way late finishing. Or, start on Saturday afternoon and finish up after church on Sunday.

Start with a crock pot. You need one that has at least two settings--high and low. Also, since Apple Butter takes a long time to cook, the kind of crock pot doesn't work that has a timer where you set it for 4 hours or 8 hours and then it switches off.

Selecting apples is part of what makes it good. I formerly used Rome or Winesap or Macintosh apples. These apples are grown for cooking and aren't as juicy as eating types like Delicious or Granny Smith. Lately it has become hard to find the cooking apples but the Japanese hybrids like Fuji and Gala work okay. Slipping in a Granny Smith or two does add a tartness that's good but not too many. (Note that any apples will work but the juicier the apples, the longer it takes to cook down. Also tartness is good for the final taste. Delicious are always last on my preference list for use in Apple Butter.)

Peel and core apples. Cut them into quarters and fill the crock pot until the lid just goes on. I know! Its hard to buy just that amount of apples. You can't really take your crock pot to the grocery store and the apples take up less space when quartered and cored. To help, imagine a 5 lb bag of potatoes. Get the size of it in your head and get about enough apples to fill that volume of space. That works pretty good for the small crock pot I have. (Your mileage may vary.) I usually use 3 or 4 lbs of apples for my small crock pot.

Add 1 can frozen Apple juice concentrate to the crock pot. (Do this before it gets hot.) [Optionally you could use frozen Grape juice concentrate. Either white or purple works fine.]

Turn the crock pot on low. (All crock pots don't seem to think low is the same temperature. This will work out since the cooking time will vary.)

Cook at least overnight (8-10 hours) on low. While cooking you may notice the apples getting soft. I always mash them up some. I don't know if it helps but it gives me something to do. The less obsessive about mashing you are, the chunkier the apple butter.

They will turn brown and cook down to a soft pulp without major amounts of water. When there is too much water you can tell because it pools at the bottom and the pulp floats on it. When it is cooked down enough, there will be no reservoir of liquid at the bottom of the crock pot.

When they are right--soft and pulpy but not watery--you have to measure what you have. This is important because it is hard to buy the right amount of apples, all apples cook down differently and you have to add spices correctly according to the final amount of pulp.

Turn off the crock pot. Get out a big bowl that is large enough to hold all the pulp. Use a large spoon or ladle to dip out the pulp into a measuring cup. For example, I have a 4-cup glass measuring cup. I fill it to the 4 cup line with pulp. That's four cups. Pour them in the big bowl. Repeat and add up the total number of cups as you go. The last one isn't likely to come out even so add that odd amount to the total rounding to the nearest cup. Pour the pulp back into the crock pot. Write down the number of cups for later.

Now comes the arithmetic part. Calculate and add the amount of sugar, corn syrup, salt and plain white vinegar by multiplying out against the number of cups of pulp. (You can use Apple Cider vinegar if you prefer.) Don't forget the quantity of pulp as you will also need it in a few hours.

Ingredient	Amount to add per 1 cup pulp
Sugar	1/4 cup
Corn Syrup	1/6 cup
Vinegar	1 Tbsp (which is 1/16 cup)
Salt	1/32 tsp

So, for example, if you get 17 cups of pulp: a bit over 4 cups sugar, just less than 6 cups corn syrup, 17 Tbsp which is a bit over 1 cup vinegar, and 1/2 tsp salt. Rounding is your friend.

I think the vinegar is important to allow the canned apple butter to keep well over time. I suggest you don't leave it out. The apple butter does not have a strong vinegary taste.

Turn the crock pot back on, stir the ingredients together thoroughly and cook on high with the lid off for up to a few hours. When you add the sugary stuff, it will seem to get more watery. With the lid off and the crock pot on high, it will begin to thicken as it cooks down. The test of when it's ready is when its thick enough to spread on toast. Too runny and the toast will get soggy. Too thick and it's hard to spread. You make the choice.

When cooked down, we have to add some spices. So get out the calculator or warm up the arithmetic part of your brain again. Use the quantity of pulp you calculated earlier. (No need to re-measure.) Add the following to the crock pot:

Spice	Amount per 1 cup pulp
Cinnamon, Ground	1/16 tsp
Ginger, Ground	1/32 tsp
Allspice, Ground	1/32 tsp
Lemon Juice	1/2 tsp (which is 1/6 Tbsp)

So, to continue our example of 17 cups pulp measured above, we add 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp allspice and 8 1/2 tsps (or 3 Tbsp) lemon juice.

Stir the spices into the sugary pulp. Mix well. Cook on high without the lid for 20 more minutes. This allows the spices to cook their flavors into the apple butter. Stir occasionally.

Move the finished Apple butter to jars. I put the apple butter in canning jars with new lids (just the round part of the lid is new, not the screw part). Clean the lip of the jar before sealing. Then the canning jars go in a large pot with water up to the metal of the lid. Bring to a boil and boil for 15 to 20 minutes. (This is a standard step in canning that is called "processing.")

If you don't do the boiling thing, keep in the refrigerator. (If someone tries freezing apple butter, let me know how it turns out. I haven't tried it.) In the canning jars, apple butter seems to keep for 2-3 years. Anything longer loses its taste but I can testify that it doesn't kill you.

Safety disclaimer: Honestly, I am no expert on the biology of keeping food safe when canning, freezing or refrigerating. I can only tell you what I have done for almost 40 years now (since I was three) and the canning jars, due caution and processing 15-20 minutes works for over a year. (I'm sure Google will help you find all sorts of information on how to safely can and store foods in traditional Mason jars.) If you get out a jar and there is goo or mold around the lid, throw it away. If you open it and it smells funny, throw it away.

One last tip: I have found True Value Hardware to be a good place to buy canning jars. They are a little cheaper than the grocery stores around here and always seem to have a good supply. Canning jars last forever and can be cleaned and reused. Just don't reuse the round part of the lid.

Almost Cooked Salmon

The other day some guys at work took me sushi eating for lunch. One suggested I try the salmon meat by itself without the rice and other stuff.

Salmon has never been my favorite fish but I feel guilty about that because it's so healthy.

The raw salmon from the sushi was delicious.

This recipe leaves the salmon cooked very little but still tastes good and doesn't look raw. (Just in case you care.)

I started with one salmon filet for one person. It had no bones and was almost one-half inch thick. I bought a pack of these at Aldi labelled "wild caught pacific salmon" and frozen solid


Each was individually vacuum sealed in plastic and frozen hard as a rock.

I put the fish in a bowl and filled the bowl with cold tap water. Now this is Texas and it's the first week of October with temperatures still in the 100's last week. The tap water isn't really cold nor is it hot. You want to thaw the fish in cold water to keep from cooking it any at all.

Salt and pepper the fish on both sides

Heat a skillet pretty hot. Not sure how else to describe it.

Put a little olive oil on the pan and coat a place big enough for the fish.

Put the fish in the pan. It should have a big sizzle. Cook 30 seconds on each side. Turn gently as it will stick. Try not to break it up.

In that 60 seconds cover the bottom of a plate with soy sauce. Add a dollop of wasabi sauce or paste to one side. Repeat for each person dining.

Put the fish on the plate artfully and let it set about one minute before eating bites of almost cooked fish, rubbed in soy sauce and just enough wasabi.