Week Nine - Tomato Sauce

Earlier I had big talk about tomato sauce, so this is me following through...

Oregon Early, Amish Sauce,and Yellow Taxi

I spend the evenings looking at various tomato sauces and pastes. There's some similarities, as I'm sure you can imagine.  First is the method by which you deal with the acidity. Tomatoes are hella acid. When I was picking tomato varieties for the garden, I tried to work the balance.  Taxi Yellows are very sweet, the Amish Pastes aren't very seedy or watery and reduce well, Oregon Earlies are sweetish, and very meaty.There's still going to be some playing with the chemistry, but when your making your sauce, think about tomato meat, seed-to-meat ration, and water... then taste, how do they taste? There's a really terrific article by Daniel Gritzer that describes his quest for the perfect sauce.  This year, or this batch anyway, I'm just going for the simple sauce... trying to get the taste and consistency right. 

So here's the recipe I worked with...

Tomato Sauce

1/3 cup olive oil
1 large onion (I used a purple one, because I had it. I think any would do well) 
3 large shallots
5 cloves of garlic
1 carrot
5 lbs of tomatoes
Salt & pepper
1/3 cup fresh basil
4 bay leaves
2 tbsp thyme
2 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp honey

Prepping the tomatoes.  This is a bit fiddly, but doable.  You're going to blanch them to convince them to take their jackets off for you. In a large sauce pan, heat salted water to a boil.  Prep another big bowl with ice water.  I put this one in the sink.  You're going to work your way through your tomatoes, 

1. Cutting a smallish x at the base of the tomato,
2. Removing the stem,
3. Plopping it in the boiling water for a few minutes. When you see the skin start peeling back, 
4. Scooping out the tomato and dropping it in the ice water bath. 
5. The ice water cools the tomato and encourages the jacket to peel back a little more.
6. Finally you'll fish the tomato out and remove the jacket. My friend Carolee saved these and dries 'em to use in soups.
7. Put the peeled tomato in the sauce pot. 
8. Repeat until your pile of tomatoes has moved from the countertop to the cooking pot.

So, yes, you can skip this step.  And you might want to, but you will be fishing out tomato skins as your sauce cooks down.  If you have a food mill this will be easy!

Start your tomatoes on a simmer.

Oil in a heavy pan or pot. Let it heat up while you remove the onions and garlic from their tunics.  I don't know if the garlic has a tunic officially, but since they're in the onion gang in my veggie basket, I'm saying yes. Chop the onions and garlic finely and put in heated pan. Stir around a bit and then reduce heat and cover. We want these to sweat a bit. 

Chop your carrot and toss in tomato mixture

Chop basil, add this and other spices to the tomatoes mixture. Then add onions and garlic. 

Let simmer til cooked to the consistency you want. the internet says 20 minutes...

Add noodles and yum!

Kat

 

While you're letting the sauce simmer down, listen to Malcom Gladwell talk about spaghetti sauce. 

The next batch of tomatoes will become ketchup!