One of the pleasures of growing tomatoes. Home made sauces to savor months from now.
Chunky tomato sauce
If you don’t grow tomatoes, you can pick them at Larriland. If you have never tried making tomato sauce, you really need to do it, if only to know how amazingly good a home made sauce will taste. Those of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s are used to smelling that intoxicating mixture of onions and garlic. Our parents made sauce, or gravy for those with Italian roots. Spaghetti with home made sauce was on our plates at least once a week in the summer, when tomatoes were abundant and cheap.
Sauce is easy, just a bit time consuming to get the flavors to develop. Start with the base. In this batch, I used carrots, onions, garlic, red pepper and olive oil. One carrot. One onion. Two cloves garlic. Half a large red pepper. Olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan.
Sauce base
The tomatoes were blanched in another pot. I used about five pounds of tomatoes for this sauce. After blanching, pull off the skins, and squeeze out the seeds. Cool water makes it easier to handle them.
I put them in the sauce one by one and mash them up to get the sauce the way I like it. Add Italian seasoning using herbs like oregano, basil and thyme.
Keep adding tomatoes, then simmer for at least 30 minutes. I then put the sauce in freezer containers, except for a small batch which goes in the refrigerator to use as soon as possible. The rest will be a welcome reminder of summer in the dead of winter.
Oh yeah, I think we are getting more tomatoes tomorrow in the CSA. Time to make more sauce.
hocofood@@@
AnnieRie Unplugged 