Tomato, to-mah-to: Whatever you call them, they’re ripe right now. (Photo: Getty)
By Hailey Evans
Associate Editor
You don’t have to be a farmer to realize it’s peak tomato season in Iowa right now. Farmers markets and grocery store shelves are practically overflowing with the juicy fruits, not to mention everyone and their mother offering up extras from their backyard gardens.
I love a tomato in salads or a slice on my sandwiches as much as the next guy. But during this time of year, it always seems like too many ripen all at once. I can never use them up efficiently. That’s why I’m excited for the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden’s upcoming “Salsa Flight Tour” on Aug. 4, a hands-on workshop led by the team at Flora. The class will guide guests through creating, tasting and pairing a flight of unique homemade salsas.
The cafe’s manager Sarah Sontag, pictured left, helped coordinate the class and gather recipes from the staff.
“The idea came from thinking about what people might have extra of in their gardens,” she said. Participants will learn how to make a salsa verde recipe from Puebla, Mexico, a nopales, also called cactus salsa, and a Guatemalan chimole recipe from Flora’s kitchen manager, Lexi, who will be leading the class.
The class is a collaborative effort between the cafe and the garden and feels like a natural extension to the educational aspect of the garden, Sontag said. For example, the cactus salsa recipe will use paddles from prickly pear cactus grown in the indoor conservatory’s desert garden display. (Photos courtesy the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden.)
“Flora’s style of food fits in well here,” Sontag said. The cafe is an extension of HoQ in the East Village and operates on the same farm-to-table philosophy — or garden-to-table in this case. Sometimes the garden’s horticulture team sets aside different plants or herbs for the Flora team to incorporate into the menu, as well as veggies from the Edible Border Garden.
If you prickle at the idea of eating a cactus, the Botanical Garden and Flora have other collaborative workshops coming up. Skip the salsa and preserve your extra tomatoes instead during the “Preserving Your Harvest” class Sept. 24. In October, learn different ways to prepare another popular garden ingredient at the winter squash workshop.
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