As the growing season comes to an end, there is often green tomatoes left on the vines that will not ripen before the first frost. Tomatoes will not ripen off of the vine, so what is one to do with the green tomatoes left at the end of the season? One solution is to make green tomato relish. Most of Mum's recipes were in her head, and although I would help I never really noted exactly what we always did; and so it was with the green tomato relish. When I first decided to make green tomato relish without Mum's help, I just decided to mix various peppers from the garden along with some yellow onions and add a few spices I thought would work. The end product was quite tasty.

Green tomatoes will not have has much juice, and they are firmer with a thicker peel than ripe tomatoes. For the relish we will be chopping the green tomatoes instead of puréeing them as we did when making salsa. We do not bother with peeling the tomatoes before chopping them; simply remove the stem end and slice them into chunks.

Green tomatoes ready for dicing

To dice the tomatoes we will use a food processor with the chopping blade installed. My sister has often mention that she does not like to use a food processor for dicing because it over dices the food. If one understands how to use the food processor properly, it is easy to control how fine it will diced the food. I think I failed to convince my sister; however, I thought I would take the time to explain to my readers how to use a food processor for dicing without turning the food to mush.

When using a food processor for dicing, place the speed control on the lowest setting. We will use the pulse feature of the processor instead of the constant on switch to help control how fine we dice. Finally, it is important not to overload the hopper when dicing. If you have a lot in the hopper, you will have to over dice part of the food in order to dice all of the food. Pulse the power switch in short bursts paying attention to the size of the diced food in the hopper. When the food is at the proper size, stop and unload the hopper; add more food and continue until all have been processed.

Coarse diced green tomatoes

I still have peppers growing in the back veggie garden, although they will need to be picked as we move into late October. I decided to just add a mixture of sweet peppers and some hot to add a bit of spice to my relish. Along with the peppers I added some yellow onions.

Various peppers from my veggie garden

Wash the peppers and remove any seeds. Slice the peppers into chucks and use the food processor to dice them. We want to dice the peppers a little finer than we did with the green tomatoes. I like to use a mixture of peppers of different colours to add a variety that will make the relish more pleasing to the eye. I also added four jalapeños to the sweet peppers for a more spicy relish. When you are finished with the peppers, dice some yellow onions; caution, don't over do the yellow onions as they have a stronger flavour than sweet onions and can overpower the relish.

Diced peppers (add diced onions as well)

Once everything is diced, mix the tomatoes, peppers, and onions together in a large pot. I added 250 ml (1cup) of apple cider vinegar and 125 ml (1/2 cup) of sugar; the sugar will cut the acidic taste of the vinegar. If you like a sweeter relish, add more sugar. To the mixture I also added black pepper and garlic to taste. Allow the mixture to cook at simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes. You don't want to overcook the mixture as you want it to be al dente. Since my relish is a low acid food; the amount of vinegar I added was a lot less than most recipes that do the water bath processing, I will process the jars in my pressure bottler. For instructions on pressure bottling, read my post on making salsa [Click Here]. The jars will need to be processed at 69 kpa (10 psi) for 10 minutes.

The final product

Eight pots of green tomato relish

I ended up with eight pots of green tomato relish and my recipe tasted close to the way Mum use to make it. I had a bit left over from filling the jars and I had it on a beef bugger for dinner; it was delicious. This relish is good as a topping on hotdogs and beef buggers, as well as a topping on beans and other veggie sides.

I am still doing my preserving; this time it is pear preserves. My neighbour down the street had a pear tree in his garden and I enquired if I could have the pears. I told him I wanted to make some pear preserves and offered him some of the end product in return for the pears. He told me he was not going to use the pears and that I was free to help myself to them.

Pears simmering on the cooker

When I make my pear preserves or jam, I leave the peel on the pear and cut slices off of the core; be careful to not cut into the core when slicing as the core is a bit tough. Either peeled or unpeeled is fine but since Mum always left the peel on, that is what I do as well. Some fruits have to be peeled, such as apples, because the peel will toughen during cooking. When my pot was almost full, about 7.5 litres, I added a 2.26 kg bag of white sugar and placed the pot on the cooker. You can also allow the pot to sit in the refrigerator over night; the sugar will draw the liquid out of the pears. However, this step is not necessary; you can start cooking the pears without letting them sit. The secret is to put the pot on a low simmer and the low heat will start the process of drawing the juice from the pears. Do not add any water, the juice of the pears is all you want or need. The pectin in the pears and the sugar will form a nice gel.

Making a full pot of these preserves is not a quick job. However, you don't have to stand over the pot as they cook. Just pop into the kitchen now and then to give the pot a stir to make sure the pears are not sticking to the bottom. You don't want scorched pears as the scorched taste will be throughout the pot of preserves. The amount will reduce as the pears cook; I ended up with a reduction amount of about a fourth. Near the end you do have to stand over the pot. When the pears have reached a translucent stage, you are near to the end of the process; the rest is getting the right consistency of the syrup. I check the gel process by taking a bit of the syrup and placing it in a small bowl to cool. When the syrup has reached the right constancy when cooled, it is time to start bottling them.

Six pots of home-made pear preserves

The bottling process is fairly simple. First check the rim of your jars for any nicks. Nicks on the rim will keep the lids from sealing properly and allow bacteria from the air to enter and spoil the preserves. Wash the jars in hot water with a liberal amount of washing up liquid. Rise the jars in hot water and placed upside down on a clean tea towel to drain and prevent anything from falling into the jars. Sterilise the jars (to prevent cracking, make sure your jars have not cooled) by placing them in a boiling water bath for 10 to 15 minutes. Have a wire rack, or metal plate, in the bottom of the pot with the boiling water to keep the jars off of the bottom of the pot. This will help to prevent cracking as well. If a jar does crack, throw it away as you can no longer use it for bottling. You will sterilise everything that you will use in the bottling process, your funnel and ladle as well as the lids. With a hot jar fresh from the water, be careful as you drain the water from the jar as the boiling water will give you a nasty burn, fill the jar up to just below where the screw band will be, this is known as leaving a head space. Immediately place a sterilised lid in place and screw a band down snugly, but not overly tight. You will need to use an oven mitt to hold the jar as you tighten the band because everything is very hot. Place the jar to the side on a dry tea towel to cool and repeat the process for the next jar. As the jars cool, the lids will pop down with a 'pop' making a tight seal. Do not remove the bands until the jars have completely cooled; I suggest waiting until the next day.

I ended up with seven US pints (473 ml). This will be my first batch as I have more pears left. I had a smidgen left over in the pot and it was very delicious. These preservers are so easy to make, contain loads of fruit unlike a lot of the market ones, and contain no preservatives except for the sugar. I still have plenty of pears so I plan on making more of these preserves as well as some pear syrup. Mum use to make the best pear syrup that was so delicious on waffles.

I decided to use some of my Roma tomatoes I grew in the back veggie garden to make some salsa. Salsa is an ancient food that pre-dates the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. Combining chilies, tomatoes, and other spices to create a sauce can be traced back to the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas. Salsa is simply the Spanish word for sauce. Salsa can take on many different forms limited only by the imagination of the cook. The salsa I made was a simple combination of tomatoes, onions, a variety of peppers, and a variety of spices and seasoning.

I prefer to use Roma tomatoes for my salsa because Romas are meatier and contain less liquid; however, one can use any variety of tomatoes. I do not peel the tomatoes before I purée them. There really is no need to go to the trouble of removing the peel, when you purée the tomatoes the peel will disappear into the purée and you will never know they are in there. Plus, the peelings of tomatoes contain a lot of the lycopene. I remove the stem end of the tomatoes and cut them in half. I also remove and discard the jelly seed mass of the tomatoes. Once I had the tomatoes sliced, and the seeds removed, I used my Prestige^tm food processor to purée the tomatoes.

Roma Tomato Pieces

Puréed Roma Tomatoes

When you use the food processor to purée the tomatoes, it will whip air into the mixture. Do not worry about the air, it will boil out when you cook your tomatoes. I grew a variety of hot and mild peppers in my garden and used some of each in making my salsa. If you have never grown your own peppers, I recommend adding some to your veggie garden next year. There is nothing like walking out to the back veggie garden and picking your own fresh peppers. To prepare the peppers, I use a food processor that will allow me to chop the peppers as coarse or fine as I desire. For this particular salsa, I decided to make a less chunky salsa and use the food processor to dice the peppers. Dicing with the food processor is way faster than doing it by hand, and when making larger batches of salsa it is the only way to go. When processing the hot peppers, I recommend wearing latex or vinyl gloves to prevent the capsaicin oil from penetrating the skin. It does not take much of the oils to cause your fingers and hands to burn for a considerable length of time. After dicing the peppers I diced two large yellow onions; yellow onions are more pungent than white and sweet onions and can over power the peppers if you use to many.

The Peppers (from my veggie garden)

Diced Peppers

I combined the tomato purée, the diced peppers, the diced onions, and added a bit of garlic, black pepper, a bit of salt, some paprika, and a bit of sugar to help cut the acidity; there is no recipe, you season to your particular tastes. Bring the mixture to a low boil, remembering to stir it often so it does not scorch; if you allow it it scorch you will have to toss the whole batch out and start over. If you find your salsa is a bit on the thin side, and you don't want to spend the time reducing the tomato puree, you can add a bit of corn starch to the mixture. Make a slurry of the corn starch before adding to the salsa and remember that you have to bring the mixture a full boil in order for the thickening agent to do its job. To test for the consistency, place a small amount of the salsa in a bowl and allow it to cool. Once it has cool, you can then get an idea of how thick the finished salsa will be. If the test is still too thin, then add more corn starch; in a slurry, to the salsa and allow it to come to a boil. I ended up with a salsa that had a nice consistency for dipping with tortilla chips, or to use as a condiment on other foods.

The Finished Product

Since salsa contains low acidic ingredients, you will have to process it in a pressure bottler for storage. Some recipes will call for adding vinegar or lemon or lime juice to help increase the acidity for storage using a water bath processing procedure. However, I don't like adding these ingredients to my salsa and using a pressure bottler is simple, and you will not turn your kitchen into a sauna. Since we are going to use a pressure bottler to process our salsa, we under cook the salsa before bottling. My pressure bottler is the one that Mum used for bottling, and it has been around for as long as I can remember. Mum and I replaced the seals and the over pressure plug; it is very important that the over pressure plug is soft and pliable as that it is the safety valve that will prevent the bottler from exploding. Mum told me a story once about the day grandfather blew up a bottler spewing green beans all over grandmother's kitchen. Luckily grandfather was not in the kitchen at the time. Grandfather had left the kitchen and got distracted and only remember he was bottling green beans when the explosion happened. However, the bottler would not have exploded if the safety valve had been in proper order; it had harden and could not blow out. I remember this story every time I use the pressure bottler, and I never leave it unattended.

Mum's Pressure Bottler

The jars used in pressure bottling are Kilner jars, also known as Mason jars in the US. These jars use a two piece top consisting of a metal lid with built in rubber seal and a metal screw band to hold the lid in place during the pressure bottling. Along with the jars you will need a metal funnel and a jar lifter for removing the hot jars from the bottler. You will need to sterilise the jars and lids using boiling water before you fill the jars. Before sterilising the jars, wash them in hot water using a liberal amount of washing up liquid.

Equipment Needed in Home Bottling

In order to ensure safe storage of our salsa, we need to process the jars for the proper amount of time so we kill any bacteria that may be present. For salsa, the recommended time is 10 minutes at 69 kpa, or 10 psi. If you remember from your thermodynamics, the relationship between pressure, temperature, and volume is a three dimensional plot. However, we are going to be holding the volume constant since we have a closed system (our pressure bottler); therefore, our relationship will concern pressure and temperature. In our closed system, at 69 kpa pressure water will boil at 113ºC (235ºF).

Before filling the jars, place about 2.5 to 5 cm of water in the bottom of your pressure bottler and allow the water to come to a simmer. This will prevent the hot jars from cracking as you place them in the pressure bottler. Fill each jar while the jar is hot, leaving about 1.3 cm headspace at the top of the jar. To make it easy, I simply fill each jar to the bottom of the screw threads at the top of the jar. Place a sterilised lid in place and screw the band very snugly to ensure that the salsa will not bubble out during processing. Check to make sure the wire rack is in the bottler; we don't want the jars to come in contact with the bottom of the pressure bottler. Place each jar in the bottler after you tighten the lid in place and repeat until all the jars are filled.

Place the lid in place and make sure it is in the lock position; follow the instructions for your particular pressure bottler. Turn the burner on high and allow the water in the pressure bottler to come to a full steam. Let the pressure bottler vent for about 10 minutes to make sure the bottler is full of steam. I watch for a steady constant full vent of steam for several minutes but I caution my readers to follow the instructions that come with their particular bottler. When you are venting a steady steam for the recommended amount of time, using an oven mitt quickly close the vent, or place the vent cap into position.

Lid in Place, Pressure Up

Pressure At 69 kpa, 10 psi

When the pressure bottler has reached the desired pressure; in our case of bottling salsa it is 69 kpa, 10 psi, or a bit above, slowly start backing off on the burner regulator. Electric cookers are better than gas cookers as they have a thermostat for the burners. As you slowly back off you will be able to bring the pressure bottler to the required pressure and keep it steady at that pressure. We need to hold the pressure at 69 kpa, 10 psi for 10 minutes. When the 10 minutes has been reached, turn off the burner to the pressure bottler and let the pressure fall to zero. Under no circumstances should you attempt to open the pressure bottler until the pressure has reached zero. Once the pressure has reached zero, carefully open the bottler allowing the steam to vent away from your face. Remove the jars from the pressure bottler using the jar lifter and place the hot jars on a tea towel away from any drafts to prevent cracking of the jars. The jars are not sealed at this point. As the jars cool, the lids will pop down with a "pop" sealing the jars. Do not disturb the jars until they have completely cooled. I usually wait until the next day to remove the bands.

The Final Pots of Salsa

I really enjoy doing my own bottling. My salsa has no artificial preservatives at all and will easily keep for two to three years, although it will be consumed long before that time.