The Family Table: Jammin’ with tomatoes
The fall is easily my favorite time of the year. The air is cool, the leaves are beautiful, and it means I don’t have to feel quite as bad when I nosh on a plate of creamy mashed potatoes and roast with gravy, or my mother’s comforting and rich beef stew.
Summer always feels like salad time to me, and I’ve been helped along this year by the garden we grew at home.
It’s still producing for us — giving me the option to pull some of the remaining fresh herbs, dinosaur kale, peppers, tomatoes and Japanese eggplant.
But I know all its going to take is one really cold night for that to go away, so I’ve set out over the past couple weekends to use up what I could.
We had amazing luck with our tomatoes this year, and over the past month, I’ve turned many of them into sauce and salsa, and tossed some into soups. We’ve enjoyed others simply: sliced with a sprinkle of blue cheese as a snack.
This past weekend, I decided to use most of the remaining to make homemade ketchup. However, as I searched for a recipe, I stumbled upon several different variations for tomato jams. I probably looked over a dozen, cobbling together what I liked from each, customizing the ingredient list both for maximum family appeal and to avoid what would’ve been my fourth trek to the grocery store for the weekend.
The result received a hearty two thumbs up. It hit the sweet, spicy, tart notes I’d hoped it would and tasted perfect as a spread on toast with a fried egg on top. It was also the perfect warmed accompaniment to some sliced pork tenderloin.
It did make a bit less than I’d thought it would because everything simmers for a while, ultimately reducing down into a syrupy, chunky concoction. That said, it’s left me hopeful that the as-yet green tomatoes on the vine ripen up so I can make it again.
There are quite a few steps to the recipe, and it’s an hours long process, though there is very little labor beyond cutting and stirring. Both the oven and stove top do all of the work, all you really need to do is mind the ingredients every once in a while so they don’t burn.
Tomato Bacon Jam
Two large sheet pans worth of sliced tomatoes
(For me, that ended up being about 10 tomatoes of various sizes — black krim, Roma, small ripe reds and a couple small yellows)
Thyme, salt and pepper
1 pound bacon
1 jalape帽o, sliced into rounds (seed it first if you want less heat)
2 big onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 cup black coffee
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
Heat the oven to 250.
Lay the tomatoes in a single layer on parchment paper.
Drizzle the tomatoes with olive oil, season well with salt and pepper and toss a few thyme leaves on them. Roast for about two hours. They’ll reduce in size, and shrivel up.
When they’re done, chop and cook the bacon in a large dutch oven until crispy.
Remove it with a slotted spoon, and pour off all but about 2 tablespoons of the fat.
In that, saute the onions, jalapeno and garlic over medium heat for a few minutes.
Deglaze the pan with the coffee and vinegar, and add in the brown sugar and honey.
Stir in the tomatoes and bacon, and bring the mixture to a simmer.
Cook on the stove top, uncovered, for about 90 minutes, stirring every so often.
When the liquid starts to get syrupy, remove the dutch oven from the heat, and let it cool.
Put the mixture into a blender and pulse it several times, until most of the chunks are gone. Jar and refrigerate!