Caprese Salad (and how to save tomato seeds)

 

Caprese Salad (and how to save tomato seeds)

It's now early October and the summer crops in gardens are winding down. It's the last hurrah of the tomatoes – if a gardener still has them – before the first frost. It's time to pull in all the ripe ones for a big pot of sauce and pick the green ones for fried green tomatoes or green tomato pickles.

Today we are doing the last Caprese Salad of the year, which must use fresh, ripe tomatoes and fresh basil leaves. A taste of summer in early fall.

Let's go to the garden – or gardens – to get two of the ingredients, tomatoes and basil!

We grew three tomato plants in the Grow City Teaching Garden this year, all of them a variety called Mary Rose McMurray.

Mary Rose McMurray tomatoes growing on the hog panel trellis in the Grow City Teaching Garden

The plants took a long time getting going this year (I heard the same from a number of gardeners), so they started forming tomatoes later than usual, though this variety does tend to have later tomatoes. A friend and Gardener Extraordinaire, Cathy, who lives in Vincennes but hails from Kentucky, brought the seed of this variety to our area, and a number of us have been growing this, saving seed, and keeping it going. She originally got the seed from a seed swap in Berea, Kentucky, that Bill Best used to do. He spent years going through Kentucky, looking for vegetables people were growing from seed they saved for years, some developing new varieties (all heirloom).

Mary Rose McMurray is similar to a San Marzano, but larger. It was found in the mountainous area of Kentucky, so it tends to prefer to grow in places that are not so hot. Cathy surmised that the Mary Rose we were growing in Grow City might have been in a spot warmer than they like. This is a very meaty tomato. It also has great flavor, a very bright red color, and is multi-purpose – raw or cooked. Another feature is that it is easy to peel, even when raw. It has significantly fewer seeds than most tomatoes, and the seeds are small. I highly recommend this tomato, if you can get it! I don't think it's in any seed catalogs.

My husband, Richard, grew some Mary Rose McMurray tomatoes in his garden at our home, among other varieties. This photo shows a batch of tomato sauce he canned on September 6, made with mostly this variety. It is significantly a brighter red than other sauce we've made.

Finally, we had a bunch of green tomatoes growing on the plants in the Grow City Teaching Garden. And finally, on September 26, a couple of them were ready to harvest – the one pictured below (very good size) and a smaller one.

Another major ingredient of Caprese Salad is fresh basil. We were growing odd sorts of basil at Grow City, but Richard had grown the basic green Sweet Basil at home. But it's late in the year, when all the plants want to do is bolt (send up flowering stalks that go to seed) no matter how often you nip off the developing flower stalks. When they do this, they grow mainly small leaves, as their energy is going into flowering and growing seeds.

Sweet Basil with flowering and seeding stalks, and some leaves

The nice thing, though, is that various pollinators, especially native bees, visit the flowers.

Bumblebee visiting basil flower, gathering nectar and pollen

There were some stalks starting to dry and darken. You can pick these and put them in a paper bag, then shake out the tiny black seeds later for next year's planting, or you can let them reseed where they are.

Darkening, drying seed stalk of Sweet Basil

I managed to find enough leaves on a couple of stalks for my purpose.

And now … to the Kitchen!!

Ingredient list (amounts very flexible – what you have, what you want)

Fresh ripe tomatoes

Freshly picked basil leaves

Fresh mozzarella

Extra virgin olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper

(salt is optional – we find that the cheese adds enough salt for us)

Assembled ingredients: tomato, extra virgin olive oil, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella cheese, and peppercorns ready to grind.

Side note on the pepper grinder:

We've been through various pepper grinders over the years at our house – expensive to cheap, different designs, etc. None have been truly satisfactory, and mainly they quit working well after a short time.

Then I saw a video from Christopher Kimball's Milk Street (I follow his Facebook page, listen to his radio program, sometimes see his program on PBS). He was demonstrating this spice/pepper grinder they had added to the Milk Street Store. Instead of a mechanism that you turn, it has a ratchet mechanism that you move back and forth.

It also has a little hopper on the front (the little phalange you see on the left side in the photo) that you can open to cleanly spoon in the whole spices. It also comes with a little cup (not shown here) that you can attach to the bottom to catch the spices, if you want to put some away. The cup has a cover for this, and you can purchase more of these. This is the most efficient grinder we have ever used. It's also really fun to use – really! I think that we have finally found The One. By the way, it is from the Kuhn Rikon company – called the Ratchet Spice and Pepper Grinder.

OK – back to work ...

Caprese Salad is so easy to make – and so fresh and satisfying! Here's all you need to do (these steps are adjusted for seed-saving, otherwise you only need to slice the tomato into rounds):

Normally you would just slice your tomato into rounds, like you do for a sandwich. In this case I wanted to save the Mary Rose McMurray seeds, so I sliced the tomato lengthwise first and removed the seeds by scooping them out carefully with a spoon (at the end, I'll show some tomato seed-saving steps). Otherwise, it is not necessary to remove seeds when you are not saving them.

My slices are, of course, half-moon shaped, as a result.

Then slice up the fresh Mozzarella. You can see in the photo that I've removed basil leaves from the stalk, choosing the ones that look best. They need to look good for this salad.

The colors of the flag of Italy!! Referred to as "il Tricolore".

Then arrange these ingredients on a plate, alternating/overlapping tomato slices, cheese slices, and basil leaves. You can arrange them in a neat design or just kind of toss them on there, as long as they are mixed up. It will taste the same either way, of course. But a nice presentation adds to the experience!

Slowly drizzle olive oil over the whole salad. It does not take much – just do this to your taste – but you don't want it to be really oily.

Ratcheting on the fresh black pepper!

Now add some fresh-ground black pepper over the salad (if you want to sprinkle on some salt, do this now, but be sure to taste the cheese first to see if you want salt).

And – there you have it!!

Ready to share! We were going to gather with some friends that day. Richard made more Caprese Salad with some other kinds of tomatoes, and we added mine to the top. It was a big hit!

Try this when you have access to fresh ingredients. Be sure to grow tomatoes and basil in your garden!!! There's nothing like ingredients fresh from the garden (or the farmers market). And if you can get plants or seeds of Mary Rose McMurray tomatoes – definitely grow those!

Now, some instructions on saving tomato seeds:

After scraping seeds from the tomato with a spoon, put them in a colander and rinse off much of the pulp.

Now put some water in a jar and transfer the seeds to it. Swirl them around some. Cover the jar with a piece of cloth or a coffee filter to keep out fruit flies and other things. Label the jar with the name of the variety and the date you started the process. Put it in a spot out of direct sunlight (cabinets are good – I use my pantry closet).

Leave the jar there for several days. Swirl the jar once a day to keep seeds loosened up.

This is a fermentation process that starts breaking down the protective gel-like coating on the seeds. Over this time, any not-so-good seeds will float to the top – you will skim those off and toss them in the compost. Any seeds on the bottom are good.

After several days, use a colander to strain the seeds. Rinse them a bit.

Spread the seeds on a surface, such as a sheet of waxed paper or a cookie sheet (be sure to label). Allow them to dry – check them now and then. While still damp they will have a tendency to clump together. As they gradually dry, separate clumps to allow more air.

From a demonstration given by Cathy - tomato seeds drying on a coffee filter (notice that they are labeled!)

When thoroughly dry, scrape them into whatever container you are using for storing the seeds envelope/packet, plastic zip-lock bag, dry jar, etc.). Be sure to label them!!

Cathy transfers the dried seeds to a pill bottle for saving

Store any seeds out of direct sunlight in a place with consistent temperature – cool, but not very cold, and never hot.

Be sure to do a germination test on your seeds before you plant them.

During her seed saving demonstration, Cathy shows a metal tin of tomato seeds she saved. Even though these seeds are at least two years old, they still tested with 100% germination. The metal tin is a great way to store seeds.