My garden is now producing at least five pounds of tomatoes each week. It's great!  When the first tomatoes arrived I'd simply slice them and eat them, put them on salads,  make bruschetta, or toss them with some pasta.  But now that they have arrived en masse it's time to cook them.  First up this year -  homemade ketchup.  Homemade ketchup is so much better than store bought that once you've made it you'll crave more.  It is one of the reasons I grow as many tomato plants as I can fit in my garden!

I've made this particular ketchup recipe for the past three or four years but this year is the first year the consistency came out right.  In past years it has been watery and a bit pulpy but I've learned from my mistakes.  The "tricks" to getting proper ketchup consistency are:

• Cut the tomatoes the evening before and let them drain overnight to release excess water.
• Use a food mill and process the cooked tomatoes a couple of times with an increasingly finer blade to get a completely smooth puree before you begin reducing it.

After doing this I not only got the right consistency but I got that consistency in exactly two hours - the time stated in the recipe.   Of course now I have to make something to use the ketchup on - hmmm sounds like dinner tonight is sausages on the grill with oven baked French fries and homemade ketchup - yum!

Fresh Tomato Ketchup

• 5 lbs ripe red tomatoes, quartered
• 3 medium red onions, finely chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded and chopped
• 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
• 1 T black peppercorns
• 1 T mustard seeds
• 1 T allspice berries
• 1 tsp whole cloves
• 2 tsp celery seeds
• 1 thin slice fresh ginger
• ½ cinnamon stick
• 2 bay leaves
• ½ c packed dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp sweet paprika
• 2/3 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp coarse salt
• Large pinch cayenne

Quarter tomatoes the evening before, place in strainer and allow to drain over night to release excess water. 

Place tomatoes, onions, bell pepper and garlic in a large pot.  Bring to boil over high heat.  Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are very soft about 30 minutes.  Pass through a food mill 2 or 3 times starting with a course blade and working to the finest blade until you have a very smooth puree. Alternatively, puree in a blender until smooth and pass through a fine strainer into a large bowl.  

Place peppercorns through bay leaves on a piece of cheesecloth and tie it up to form a bag.  Add to tomato mixture along with brown sugar, paprika, vinegar, salt and cayenne.  Simmer slowly stirring frequently until ketchup is very thick, at least 2 hours.  Remove cheesecloth bag.

I've been cooking from my garden for the past couple of weeks with the basil and parsley doing particularly well.  In my continuing quest to use this bounty, this week I experimented with a new version of an old favorite - "Penne in Creamy Basil-Walnut Sauce" from Cooking Light.  This variation uses milk, white bread and walnuts for an interesting twist.  If you like pesto this "creamy" variation is a great recipe to try.  The walnuts are a nice change from pinenuts and the milk soaked bread ads an interesting texture.  The basil is the most important ingredient here though, and nothing beats using basil picked only moments earlier.   I modified the recipe just a bit by adding sautéed cremini mushrooms and by topping the dish with a few diced, freshly picked, cherry tomatoes.  Small changes but the tomatoes in particular really made the dish stand out.

As great as this dish was, my parsley and basil are constantly producing more and more and I'm always looking for new uses.  So if you have any favorite pesto variations then please, please share!

Grilling is always a favorite in the summer and lately we've been grilling every weekend  we can.  Saturday, Husband made grilled chicken coated with our favorite local barbeque sauce from Sam's BBQ.  The sauce is a really great tangy sweet that so beats anything you can get at the grocery store. 

As yummy as the chicken was though, a whole chicken for two people is a lot and after a dinner and lunch I'd had my fill.  This left us with quite a bit of chicken for Leftover Tuesdays which is being hosted this month by fellow bay-area blogger Dolores at Culinary Curiosity.  Now I know chicken can be adapted to many different variations but I wanted to redress the chicken into something different enough from the original dish that that it wouldn't feel like leftovers.  This ruled out many of my initial ideas such as a salad, sandwich, etc.

I also wanted the meal to be a one-dish meal that was quick and easy.  One of my favorite one-dish meal categories is Mexican food so I decided to make a variation of Enchiladas.  I used one of my long-time favorite lunch meals, Black-Bean Burrito Bake from Cooking Light, as the starting point.  This recipe works really well for lunch but it isn't really very filling for dinner so working the chicken into this recipe was a great solution.

This recipe is really easy to make since the only cooking happens in the oven and the prep is minimal.  After 15 minutes of prep and 30 minutes of cooking we were enjoying our tasty meal that had such a minimal resemblance to the original grilled chicken that it absolutely didn't feel like leftovers.... 

Chicken and Black Bean Burritos

• 1 whole chipoltle chile
• 1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream
• 2 cups grilled chicken, chopped
• 15 oz black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 4 whole 8-inch tortillas
• 1 cup salsa
• 1/2 cup Cheddar cheese, shredded

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Chop chile and combine with sour cream. Let sit 10 minutes. Place about half of the beans in a food processor and process until finely chopped. Add chicken, chopped beans, remaining beans, corn to sour cream mixture. Spoon 1/2 cup filling down the center of each tortilla. Roll-up tortillas and place them seam side down, in an 11x7-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Spread salsa over tortillas; sprinkle with cheese.  Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until thoroughly heated. 

Turns out beets are easy to prepare and the salad was great.  In this recipe the beets are roasted in the oven, wrapped in foil, for about an hour.  After cooling the skins easily slip off and you are left with ready to eat beets.  We had both red and golden beets.  I tasted each before putting them in the salad and only found small differences.  Husband describes the flavor of beets as tasting like "Dirt" which he apparently ate a fair amount of as a child!  I'm not sure I'd describe the flavor as dirt, but either way they tasted great.  As for the salad, the mixture of red wine vinegar, oranges and beets was wonderful with both sweet and tangy flavors. If beets are in season where you are I'd recommend give them and the salad a try - it's a nice, tasty change from the plain old garden variety green salad....