Tomato Jam

Adapted from Mark Bittman's Tomato JamRecipe 

originally published in The New York Times (find it on NYT Cooking))

August, and the Tomatoes Are Trying to Tell Us Something

There's a moment every August when the tomatoes seem to take forever to ripen, then they all are ready at once!

This week, we prepare for the winter, just like our grandmothers. We sterilize jars, clean tomatoes, and put a pot on the stove.

The recipe we're bringing to the market this Saturday isn't our own, It comes from the one-and-only Mark Bittmen first published in The New York Times. It's a tomato jam, though "jam" undersells it a little. It's closer to a chutney: sweet from sugar, bright from lime, warmed through with ginger, cumin, cinnamon, and clove, and finished with just enough jalapeño to keep you honest. It simmers low and slow for over an hour, the whole kitchen filling with the kind of smell that makes neighbors ask what's cooking.

That slow simmer is really the point. There's no shortcut that gets you the same depth. no quick-pickle version, no microwave hack. Slow, like Slow Food. You let the tomatoes break down, let the sugars concentrate, let the spices do their patient work, and an hour and change later you have something that tastes like it remembers where it came from. That's the whole idea behind slow food, really: not slowness for its own sake, but the understanding that some flavors and some connections, to the land, to the season, to each other only show up when you stop rushing toward the finish line.

Mark Bittman's Tomato Jam Recipe by Mark Bittman, originally published in The New York Times (find it on NYT Cooking)

*Note from team member, Julie Quinn. If you chop the tomatoes very small, no need to peel the skins. They dissolve on their own*

We love tabling at the Boulder County Famer's Market! FInd our other preservation ideas from previous months. Make It Last: Tomatoes & Peaches, Salts, Butter and Fermented Beets (May)