Kitchen Tip: Saving Berries

Maru and I love strawberries. I actually really like almost all berries, but she is particularly partial to a classic strawberry. The main way we consume them is in smoothies, so we use them up fast. We're not in easy reach of a U-pick farm here in the city, and the 1lb boxes of strawberries can often cost as much as $5 a pop, but sometimes you get lucky and the corner grocery store wants to liquidate boxes of berries that are a little overripe. This happened to me the other day when I found the 1lb boxes for 89 cents each! So I bought 12. Yes, 12 pounds of strawberries. It was all that would fit in my market bag. What can you do with 12 pounds of berries for two people? Why, freeze them for later of course!

Frozen berries are perfect for smoothies, and they are also great for making quick little fruit toppings and compotes. Throw a couple cups worth in a sauce pan with a couple tablespoons of sugar and cook them down, and there you have it! A yummy topping for pancakes, waffles, french toast, crepes, strawberry shortcake, etc.

Here is the process we follow to get our berries in the freezer:

1. Clean them really well.

2. For strawberries, cut off the end.

3. Place the berries in an even layer on a cookie sheet. Strawberries can be set up on their flat end.

4. Put the cookie sheet in the freezer and let them freeze for 1-2 hours.

5. Label a ziploc bag with the date. Break the berries off of the cookie sheet and bag them, then return to the freezer until desired. They will keep really well for a couple of months and reasonably well for a couple months beyond that. Over time, they just start to lose a little flavor.

By freezing them on the cookie sheet first, you prevent them from freezing into one big lump. You'll actually have separate berries in the bag.

Here is our traditional morning smoothie recipe. This makes two large glasses:

2 bananas

1 cup frozen strawberries

1 cup yogurt

Juice of one orange

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup water (just to make it more drinkable)

Throw everything in a blender and puree. Mmmmm.

Kitchen Tip: Stewed Tomatoes

This one isn't so much a recipe as a kitchen tip; a way to process and store tomatoes when they come into season. I know this post is way too early for all of you farther north, but I'm going to post a couple recipes that use these tomatoes this week. What you get here is a homemade version of canned, stewed tomatoes. If you haven't had the chance to preserve your own fresh tomatoes, just use canned in my recipes.

There are many ways to can or preserve fresh tomatoes at home. This technique is a really easy way to not only take advantage of fresh tomatoes when you get them, but also have that slow-cooked tomato flavor at your disposal whenever you need it and in no time at all. My friend Joe always makes gallons of tomato sauce at the end of the summer, which is great, but requires a fair amount of work and leaves your house smelling very tomatoey for a week. What I describe here does not give you sauce, it gives you stewed tomatoes, which can then be made into a nice, thick marinara sauce, homemade ketchup, added to stews or soups, or anything else you can think of where cooked tomatoes are needed.

In the interest of keeping things simple, I don’t peel or seed the tomatoes before cooking them. You could do that if you wanted, but it would defeat the purpose of keeping things no fuss. These quantities are for an 8 cup crock pot.

Stewed Tomatoes

4 lbs ripe tomatoes washed and roughly chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 one gallon zip-loc bags

Put the tomatoes and salt in the crock pot. Cook on high for 4-6 hours or on low for 8-10 hours. Once the time is up, blend the cooked tomatoes with a stick blender or upright blender. Let the tomatoes cool for about half an hour. You should have about 6 or 7 cups of stewed tomatoes. Ladle 3-4 cups into each zip-loc bag. The easiest way to do this is to place the bag in an upright container, like a yogurt container, ladle the tomatoes in, then squeeze the air out and close the bag while the container supports the liquid.

Clear a flat space in your freezer and lay the bags out flat. They will be frozen solid in a few hours. One bag is a good quantity for sauce for a pound of pasta. If you need to use less than a bag, just gently break off what you need. While the tomatoes will come out of the crock pot very watery, they will thicken up quickly on the stove. If you have a bigger crock pot, you can obviously stew more tomatoes at a time. Just fill the thing to the brim with chopped tomatoes!

Kitchen Tip: Storing leafy herbs

Aside from recipes, a big part of things going well in the kitchen is food processing and storage. I've learned a few things here and there from other people and trial and error, so when it comes up, I'll share!

So the last two recipes I've posted require just a bit of chopped, fresh parsley. The last thing I would ever want anyone to do is buy a whole bunch of parsley (or cilantro, or basil, or epazote, or whatever fresh herb), use a few tablespoons then let the rest go to waste. There is a really easy way to store any herb that you buy fresh on the stem.

First, wash it well, then shake off the excess water in a salad spinner or just by grabbing the bunch of stems and flinging the water off outside. Get a tall, wide container (an empty yogurt container works perfectly), fill it halfway with tap water, place your herbs in there as though they were flowers going in a vase, then put a plastic bag over the top. Put your "vase" in the fridge. If the herbs were nice and fresh when you bought them, they will keep like this in the fridge for up to three weeks (possibly, definitely two)! You just pull them out and take what you need when you need it. It's best if you change the water every few days.

I have also gotten this technique to work for leafy greens like spinach and chard. It keeps them from wilting.