Preserving tomatoes and chillies this summer - plus the quest for green Mexican chilli sauce!

My garden this summer

After returning to my life, where I actually had a life - I planted my garden to the best of my ability, even planting companion plants like basil between tomatoes - trying to establish herb areas, etc.  We also added pine needles as mulch to the tomato plants - which did wonders!  The clay heavy soil of our garden was balanced with acidic material.  The chilli plants also did really well (also it was a very hot and dry, long summer).  

Anyways, I then had to preserve the abundance, like tomatoes, and chillies.  

A walk through my garden in February:

Preserving tomatoes - the easy way

Preserving is a huge amount of work!

I tried a fancy recipe by Wellness Mama, with fresh herbs, and boiling for hours, carrots, and putting a carrot in and removing it later to remove acidity.   Although it was delicious, I just didn't have the energy to do that every time I had a bowl of tomatoes!

Wellness Mama pasta sauce!

Later on, a few friends had said they oven roast cut up tomatoes with garlic, onions etc.  Then just freezing it.  So I started doing that!  Sometimes with fresh herbs from the garden, whole sprigs.  

180 C for about 45 min (until done).  

It was so much easier!  I did freeze it usually before blending due to not having time - but when I needed to use it I could blend it.  It was so delicious, and made it possible to preserve with far less energy.

Some of my tomatoes were the yellow type!

Fresh herbs from the garden - that I added, and also shared at work.  I learned how to grow and harvest oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary...all things I actually wanted to use.  No more growing things I don't actually use.  I even was able to harvest some funny but useful carrots for some roasted sauces!

Preserving chillies

Shane and I went to a Mexican restaurant, and loved the green chilli sauce!

By far the most fun and exciting - addition to our lives, chilli sauces!  Not hard to make either, just panfrying up cut up chillies, garlic and onions, and spices.  USE GLOVES TO CUT UP THE CHILLIES by the way.  I went without twice and not right away - became in extreme pain.)  

I kept trying recipes for chilli sauces, starting with Green Gavin chutney sauce involving lots of spices like cumin and turmeric (and not blending it up after).  They were all really good - but in the end although the heavily spiced sauces were amazing, realised that the green chilli sauce was probably not very spiced (I'm talking cumin, turmeric, ginger, coriander).  I would still use the garlic and onion though!  Going to try this later today, and will post up the results.

Here are a few versions I created, with a photo of how the cut up ingredients looked.  One well liked one at the end was SPICE TRUCK that I did not photograph.  (We named them so we could remember what worked better, what we liked, etc.)  Basically I followed a basic recipe, amounts of chillies and garlic and oil roughly the same, and experimented with the spices.  

Hot chilli chutney - from the Greening of Gavin blog.

Recipe here: http://www.greeningofgavin.com/2009/02/hot-chilli-chutney.html

But it involved frying for 15 min, and these ingredients:  450g chillies , 1 onion, 6 cloves garlic, 2 T ground cumin (was 4 but I reduced it), 2 T turmeric, 25g grated root ginger, 1 T salt, 3/4 cup olive oil, 3 T sugar, 1 1/4 cups white vinegar.

How it looked before frying.

How it looked after bottling!  This sauce was VERY spicy and hot.  Was amazing added to mayo - but extremely intense straight.

After this I realised I could blender it, and it would be more pleasant to use as a sauce - on cheese and crackers, or in cooking.

Nonnie's experimentations with chilli sauces, first one -
Beauty

I carefully recorded what I did with this one, put alot of energy into it.  We named it Beauty as it was delicious.  This is what it looked like before we cooked it.  After it was cooked, we blendered and bottled it and used it right away (in a sterilised tall bottle).

It is easy to share with you now as I recorded each version directly onto a new Google Slide, duplicating and changing the relevant details each time (well actually after scribbling on scrap paper with a vivid the changes and adding later).

Fry - 15 min

450g green chillies

1 onion

6 cloves garlic

1 t ground cumin

1 t coriander

1 T salt

3/4 cup olive oil

Boil - 10 min

½ cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups white vinegar

Boil hard - 1 min

¼ packet pectin

• Sterilise the jars and lids in an oven 120C
• Finely chop chillies, remove seeds as much as possible.
• Mix together the first lot ingredients (chillies etc).
• Transfer to a heavy based pan and fry for 15 minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking.
• Add sugar and vinegar and bring to the boil. 
• Cover pan and boil for 10 minutes stirring occasionally.  Then add ¼ packet pectin and boil max heat for 1 min
• Cool down for 20 min, then blend
• Pack into jars, then seal.

Nonnie's experimentations with chilli sauces, second good one -
Spirited!

Lots of spices and kick!!!  Looked much like Green Gavin.  The turmeric is for health, also the garlic, onion, ginger, and cumin and coriander for taste.  And apparently black pepper helps activate the health benefits of turmeric!  Which needs to be cooked to be activated as well...

Fry - 15 min

3/4 cup olive oil

480g green chillies

1 large brown onion

8 cloves garlic

a few chunks ginger

1 T cumin seeds

1 T coriander (ground)

2 T turmeric (ground)

Black pepper, sprinkle over

3/4 T salt

Boil - 10 min

½ cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups white vinegar

Boil hard - 1 min

¼ packet pectin

More detailed method - as above (Beauty recipe).

Last entry to come - hopefully regular Mexican green chilli sauce....the quest could be closer to its ending (the quest never truly ends as you never stop learning...)

green mexican chilli sauce (my version)

The traditional version had pork stock, and flour to thicken. Still searching for that amazing recipe I had at a restaurant - but this one I made was really good! Used pectin instead of flour to thicken.

--Fry - 15 min--
olive oil - cover pan 1 cm
370g green chillies (hot)
1 green capsicum
2 small brown onions
8 cloves garlic
Ground cumin, sprinkle over
Black pepper, himalayan rock salt, sprinkle over

--Boil - 10 min--
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup white vinegar

--Boil hard - 1 min--
1/2 packet pectin

• Sterilise the jars and lids in an oven 120C.
• Finely chop chillies, remove seeds as much as possible.
• Mix together the first lot ingredients (chillies etc).
• Transfer to a heavy based pan and fry for 15 minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking.
• Add sugar and vinegar and bring to the boil. Cover pan and boil for 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Then add ¼ packet pectin and boil max heat for 1 min.
• Cool down for 20 min, then blend.
• Pack into jars, then seal.