by Dominique Didier
With an abundance of tomatoes, everyone is breaking out their favorite tomato recipes, and almost everyone has their favorite one. I personally do not usually go for making my own sauce—too much work, easier to go to the store and buy a jar already prepared—however, when I saw this recipe I had to try it. It’s only got a few ingredients and can be modified for all kinds of uses: add ginger, coriander and peas for a more Asian flair, or add sauteed eggplant, onion and peppers for more of a ratatouille style sauce. It’s easy to make this ‘your own’ and it freezes well!
The original recipe describes processing the tomatoes by using a box grater, but below is my modification which I think is an easier and lest wasteful method.
Yield: About 2 ½ cups
Ingredients:
5 pounds tomatoes
¾ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 garlic clove, halved
1 basil sprig
1 bay leaf
Preparation:
To remove the skins from the tomatoes score an ‘X’ in the top of each tomato with a knife. Place tomatoes in a pot of boiling water until the skins start to peel off, about 2 minutes. Remove the tomatoes and rinse under cold water. Gently slip the skins off the tomatoes.
Place a sieve over a large bowl, or use a colander lined with cheese cloth to collect the inner juicy seedy pulp.
Cut out the stem of your tomatoes, quarter them, and scrape out the seedy pulp into the sieve or cheesecloth lined colander. This is a messy job, but you should end up with a pile of tomato flesh and all the juicy inner bits and seeds in your sieve allowing the juices to drip into the underlying bowl.
Grate or process the tomato flesh in a food processor. I used the grating blade and this turned the flesh into nice uniform pulp. Squeeze out the juicy seedy fleshy parts that are draining in your sieve or colander so that you have all the juice but no seeds from the inner pulp.
Put the processed tomato pulp and the squeezed juice into a low, wide saucepan (I used my Dutch oven). Add salt, olive oil, tomato paste, garlic, basil and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a brisk simmer.
Reduce the sauce by almost half, stirring occasionally, to produce about 2 ½ cups medium-thick sauce. This takes about 20–30 minutes, cook more or less to achieve the consistency you desire. Taste and adjust seasonings. This will keep up to 5 days in the refrigerator or may be frozen.
Note: you can just process the peeled tomatoes whole with seeds and all; however, some claim the seeds are bitter and I find the appearance of the sauce much more appealing without the seeds.
Photo by Anshu Si