Tomato Season

We purchased 15 lbs. of tomatoes and turned them into 3 lbs. of condensed and delicious sauce. It's certainly a good way to get proficient at peeling and deseeding. One big tip I can offer:

• It's a lot faster to deseed a tomato if you cut it across its "equator", rather than lengthwise. The reason being that the cell walls between the seed sacs run up and down the tomato, so cutting with the walls means you have to break through them with your finger. Cutting the other way means you've got access to all the seeds at once.

Normally I don't salt the tomatoes when they're being roasted, but I gave it a shot this time. The idea being that the salt would help draw out the moisture more quickly from the tomatoes, letting it get down to the business of caramelizing more quickly. We let these sit in a low oven (about 250 degrees Fahrenheit) for about 4.5 hours, so I can't say if it really helped that much. It did translate into less salt later in the process, but if too much salt were added, you might be in trouble down the road.

Roasted Tomato Sauce

I hate raw tomatoes.  I don't know if I was attacked as a child by tomatoes, or someone wielding them, but I just cringe at the taste and even the smell.  Yet for some reason, I really love roasted, sweet and rich tomato sauce.

Muir Glen makes great fire roasted tomato products, but they were never that sort of meaty, sweet and deep flavor that I really enjoyed. So I set out this morning to make my own off the top of my head.  Luckily, this not only turned out well, but it turned out better than any previous sauce I'd made!

Serves 2

• 10 ripe Roma tomatoes (look for equals sizes to help the roasting process)
• 1 head of garlic
• 1 half stalk celery (skinned, thinly sliced)
• 1 medium carrot (~1/4 cup, thinly sliced)
• 1 medium sized shallot (~1/2 cup, diced)
• 1 tbspn fresh basil (chiffonade)
• 1 tbspn fresh oregano (minced)
• 1 bay leaf

To get the tomatoes in good shape, first skin and de-seed them.  I hate the flavor introduced by the seeds and guts; I'm a big fan of tomato flesh alone.  Place the tomato halves cut-side down on a baking sheet.  Season them with salt, pepper, and a good Italian herb medley.  Add a smattering of skinned garlic cloves to the pan to exchange flavors.  Drizzle with olive oil and put them into a 350 degree oven.  For this experiment I kicked my oven into convection mode.  This seemed to dry the tomatoes out more quickly and speed up the cooking process.  If you don't have a convection oven, you can increase the heat and/or wait longer.

Let the tomatoes roast for about 1.5 hours.  You'll want them to be shriveled and cooked down without too much burning.  I had a little burnt tomato where they met the pan, but it was easily remedied.  Remove the tomatoes from heat and set aside.

Add a tablespoon of vegetable oil (a mix of butter here may have been nice) to a medium saucepan and add the shallots and one clove of minced garlic.  When the shallots have started to become translucent and the garlic is fragrant, add the carrots and celery.  Let these cook for until they're begun to get tender.

Chop the roasted tomatoes into decent sized chunks and add it to the mix.  Add a little water as well to give it room to simmer.  Add a tablespoon of basil (as a chiffonade to be fancy), a tablespoon of oregano, and one bay leaf.  Season with salt and pepper at this point.

Let the sauce simmer for 10-15 minutes.  It should be moist, but not runny.  If the flavor is a little acidic, try adding in a quarter tablespoons of unsalted butter until it rounds out a little.