Tomatoes with garlic

When the harvest season is in its peak, nearly every family in Latvia is busy putting veggies and fruits in jars for winter. The empty jars from the year before are brought up from the family basement, washed and sterilized in the oven - all ready to receive the new load of garden harvest. The ladies of the family get out from their cabinets the treasured family recipe book and the work starts! Our vecmamma (gradmother) also has such recipe book.

One day, when we brougt fromt the garden a good amount of tomatoes, vecamma decided to put them for winter, using one of her (and our!) favourite recipes - "tomatoes with garlic". Hafsa was very curious to see, how she's doing things, so vecmamma offered to show her.

First, the tomatoes needed to be washed and the garlic cut in small pieces. For adding some extra flavour, inside the empty jar, vecmamma placed one bay leaf and some pieces of clove. Then, using the end of the knife, she cut a small cross in the tomatoe. After seeing vecmamma do it, Hafsa herself also tried to do it, with vecmammas caring hands guiding her. Then, vecmamma took one small piece of garlic and showed Hafsa, how to stuff it inside the tomatoe through the little cross sign. This way, the taste of the garlic gets right inside in the tomatoe!

Once the tomatoe had got its piece of garlic, it was ready to go inside the jar. Some more garlic pieces were placed also here and there in the jar among tomatoes. This way, vecmamma and Hafsa filled quite a few jars with garlic-filled tomatoes.

The next step is to prepare the marinade, which will be poured over the tomatoes and will preserve them all winter long. The recipe of the marinade is very simple. It consists of: water, vinegar, sugar and salt. Vecmamma combines all these items in their due proportions in a big pot, which she puts on coooking stove for boiling. Right next to it, she places another pot, in which later on the filled jars will be sterilized. If you look closely enough, you will notice that this second pot has water and net inside it, so that the bottoms of the jars are not sitting directly at the bottom of the pot. If the net would not be there, the jars could burst from the direct heat of fire. Jars need to be boiled in this pot, in order to sterilize them and minimize the presence of any unwanted bacteria in the jars - this way, the tomatoes will not get spoiled all winter long, insha'Allah.

When both pots have reached boiling temperature, vecmamma places the jars filled with tomatoes inside the sterilization pot and right away fills them with the boiling marinade from the other pot. When the jars are filled, vecmamma let them boil on slow flame for about 10-15 minutes.

After the sterilization is complete, vecmamma takes the jars out of the pot and places them on the table. For that, she uses a special jar-holding instrument, which catches the boiling hot jar, so that she herself does not have to touch it.

When the jar is on the table, vecmamma quickly closes it with a cover, tighting it as tight as she can. As the jars cool down, the cover will become air-tight - so tight that it will be even difficult to open it later on, when we'll want to eat the tomatoes!

After putting on the cover, vecmamma carefully takes the jar with a towel and bends it to the side a bit to see, if the cover is not leaking any liquid. If the cover is leaking, she replaces it with another one. Afther that, she places the jars upside down on the table, where she covers them with a warm blanket to make the heating last longer. This way, the jars will sit on the table for a few hours till they cool down. Since the jars are upside down, vecmamma will be easily able to detect, if any of them are still leaking. Any leakage means that the preserved veggies would get spoiled, and we don't want to see that happen, do we?

Later in the evening, vecmamma and Hafsa will go down to the basement and arrange these jars neatly on shelves, where they will stay till winter.