so...

[funeralcrasher]

How would I make tomato sauce from fresh-picked tomatos? (aside from putting them on the floor and stomping up and down)

Comments

[pkbarbiedoll.livejournal.com]

thanks!

A Tomato Sauce recipe... Part I

[trans-mag.livejournal.com]

For best results, remove not only the skins but the seeds before pureeing or blending with other ingredients. To thicken the sauce and bring out the flavour, you must *cook* the pureed tomatoes together with the herbs and spices, and some additions such as garlic, onions, plus whatever other spices and vegetables may suit your taste. This is for basic, all-purpose tomato sauce. Later, you can add ground meat, zucchini, eggplant, sweet peppers, hot peppers or other things as specific recipes (lasagna, cannelloni or other pasta classics) may require.

Here's my recipe:

This makes enough for a couple of big spaghetti dinners (3-4 cups)

6 large tomatoes (8-10 medium size), *fully ripe*
1 large Vidalia onion, finely diced; grated in a food processor is better
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped; again you can just do these together
with the onion in a food processor
2 Tablespoons olive oil (or peanut oil or canola oil; just *don't* use
butter -- it'll burn for sure and ruin the flavour of the sauce)
1 tablespoon dry Oregano flakes
1 tablespoon dry Basil flakes
3 bay leaves
1 teaspoon sugar
Salt and Pepper to taste

A note on Salt and Pepper: Wait until the sauce is almost finished simmering before you taste and add enough pepper so you can taste the brightening effect it has on the overall flavour of the sauce -- maybe 3-4 good pinches -- and enough salt so you can clearly taste *everything* in the sauce -- probably, for this much sauce, around a teaspoon. The idea is, you don't want to taste the salt and pepper themselves, just their beneficial effects on the other flavours.

Blanch (pop into rapidly boiling water for 3-5 min.) the tomatoes and then plunge into cold (preferably iced) water for another 3-5 minutes. As soon as they are cool to the touch, take them out one by one and just pull the skins off.

Quarter the tomatoes and scoop out the seeds and watery stuff in the middle. Retain as much of the interior fleshy parts as possible. Puree the cleaned tomatoes in a blender or mash with a potato masher till smooth and relatively creamy. (If you just left the tomatoes like this, they'd separate and you'd be forever stirring up the bowl to keep the water mixed in.) At this point, the consistency is relatively thin and the flavour is somewhat bitter.

In a big saucepan or stock pot on medium heat, add the oil, onion and garlic. Cook, stirring constantly for 3-4 minutes till the onions are transparent and soft. Don't brown the onions or you might get a burned flavour to the finished sauce.

Add the pureed tomatoes, basil, oregano and bay leaves. And the teaspoon of sugar. This may sound crazy, but you really do need a little sugar to take the bitter edge off the tomato flavour and let the herbs and other flavours come through.

At this point, some people also like to add a cup of beef stock (you can actually get pretty good stock in the grocery store, in a box!) but that all depends on how you want your finished sauce to taste and how much time you have to simmer it.

(Stay tuned for part II; they wouldn't let me post the whole thing in one single text chunk...);-)

A Tomato Sauce recipe... Part II

[trans-mag.livejournal.com]

As I was saying...

Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly, wait til the pot gets back up to medium again, and then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. Stir frequently and just let the water evaporate. It usually takes at least 45 minutes to an hour for this volume of sauce to lose enough water to thicken up to a nice consistency. Just keep simmering if you want it thicker, but remember that the overall volume of sauce you end up with will be correspondingly less.

It's *really* important to stir regularly and cook on the lowest simmer possible while still keeping the sauce gently bubbling, to avoid burning the sauce, and the danger of burning increases as the sauce gets thicker.

At the end, remove the bay leaves and toss them. They've done their work. And you *don't* want to bite into one of those guys in the middle of dinner! :-P

This recipe can be canned, like preserves, and will keep for quite a while. I usually just make enough at a time for the meals I intend to cook in the coming few days and store leftovers in the fridge. But when the tomatoes really start coming in in volume, I'll double or triple the recipe (make sure you have a big enough pot) and freeze the sauce in 2-3 cup portions. I just use heavy-gauge freezer bags and squeeze all the air out of them I can before zipping them up. Stored like this this, I can enjoy my own tomato sauce all winter! :-)

I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it's not, really. And remember that, if you go big with the recipe, you'll enjoy the benefits for months to come...

Let me know if you try it! :-)