This past weekend was partially spent trying to save the flavours of summer.

It started with a trip to the farmers’ market on Saturday morning where I purchased (among other things) several pounds of Roma tomatoes and a variety of chiles, including jalapenos, habaneros, serranos, and sweet gypsies.

The plan for the tomatoes was to oven-roast them and then freeze them. I did this for the first time last year and, believe me, using them for a meal in the dead of winter is like serving summer for dinner.

To roast them, the tomatoes were first cut in half lengthwise and put in a glass baking dish. A few garlic cloves were smashed, peeled, and tucked in around the tomatoes then almost 500 ml of olive oil was poured over all.

After roasting in a medium-hot oven (375 F) for one hour, the pans were removed and the tomatoes were put on cooling racks to cool¹ and to drain. Once cool, they were put in the freezer until a miserable winter day…

While all that was going on, I also fired up the smoker and smoked about a dozen chiles. Some of the larger ones were still relatively fleshy after a day in their smoky sauna so they’ve been frozen too.

The sweet gypsy peppers were stuffed with a chicken/ricotta mixture, bathed in a homemade tomato sauce, and then covered with grated mozzarella cheese. After a wee bit in the oven, dinner was served:

Mmmmm…cheeeeeeese!

My next project will be roasting corn for freezing. I’m already dreaming about the roasted corn chowder I’ll be eating this winter…

Even though there was local racing this weekend, Rogie is in no shape to be running his little doggy heart out:

As you can see, he’s a wee bit on the chubby side these days…

¹ Yes, I have a keen sense of the obvious. Believe me, it’s a gift.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Food, glorious food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.