the grand experiment.

I really wanted to put up tomato sauce this year. We grew up canning and eating homemade sauce, and I loved it. We also grew our own tomatoes - lots of them.

My garden was pretty much a flop this year; I didn't realize before we moved up to our house that the spot I had plotted didn't get morning sun. And most plants need a healthy amount of sun. So we got all of 3 tomatoes - definitely not enough for much of anything. So last weekend I went to the farmers markets and got some tomatoes to sauce. I started with half a bushel and cooked them down, then pureed with a foley food mill. The results were less than exciting - more watery mess than anything, and when I put the "tomato juice" back on the stove to reduce it to sauce, I only ended up with about 2 and a half quarts by the end of the process. Not to be defeated, I turned to google, like I do with most perplexing questions. I found that quite a few people were having success by roasting tomatoes that had been cored, along with garlic. So I tried it. Another half bushel of tomatoes at the roadside "van" near our house -  and I popped them in the oven for an hour and a half at 400, stem side down. I seasoned them well, added garlic, sweet banana peppers, and whatever kind of onion I had chopped up in the fridge. After roasting, i slipped the skins off and threw them in the blender with some of the liquid. I added that back in, cooked it a little more in the oven, then mashed by hand, cooled, and bagged for the freezer. I ended up with 6 quarts of fabulous tasting chunky sauce. So so much easier and much less mess than traditional sauce. We had the first of it on pizza tonight - I added a can of tomato paste to give it a little more form, and it was great.

IMG_5311