In my life, two things inevitably happen…like clockwork…almost ritualistically, toward the end of August or into early September.
Thing the first is that my friends will come out of their summer hidey-holes and my pad will turn into grand central station for a good week or so.
My theory is that September really is more like the beginning of a new year than January is, but I’ll always be happy to celebrate both. Even though my years are no longer punctuated with school year beginnings and endings for my sprogs, September is often the month when the fiscal year turns for many, typically leaving me with oodles of time for reflecting and tweaking life in the round. Living in a university/college town accents it all with the wave of new students coming in and occupying space in ways we’ve forgotten for two months. It’s kind of fun and def carries that new year smell that brings us together…or perhaps it’s thing the second that brings folks to my home.
Thing the second is setting up a bunch of roasted tomato sauce for the freezer because I’m going to need little bags of sunshine to open in the bleak winter months.
I posted a recipe about roasted tomato sauce on another blog from a lifetime or two ago, but it was more of a method and not very sciency. Since then, I’ve tweaked the recipe a bunch and actually took notes and created some shortcuts so considering making roasted sauce from a half bushel of tomatoes might not seem so daunting. At some point, I will create a recipe that uses far fewer tomatoes, but it will still likely be for about 2 kilos, because anything less just isn’t worth it, to my mind.
This recipe is for a half bushel, so feel free to scale up or down, as desired.
Before getting into the recipe, I should like to impress upon you the importance of buying quality tomatoes. I got this year’s half bushel of fresh, Ontario tomatoes at Freshco and they are great. I didn’t have to throw out a single fruit due to mushiness. Hell, I think I only cut one “bad” spot off a tomato from the entire lot and it was really just a scab and I was being overly picky. When I walked into the store, I could smell the tomatoeyness. You want that. You want produce from your region that smells like fresh produce. Don’t be afraid to dig into the box to have a look at lower layers of fruits, but you can always tell by the smell. You might get funny looks, but you want GOOD produce, so stick your nose right into that big ol’ box o’ tomates.
I should also like to impress upon you that preparedness is a good thing when it comes to staring down a half bushel of tomatoes. That, perhaps, it might be a bit unwise to impulse purchase a half bushel of tomatoes knowing they should be processed pretty much immediately and determining in hindsight that you could have turned said half bushel of tomatoes that you purchased on impulse into gorgeous roasted tomato sauce if only you had borrowed or purchased another set of roasting pans and stacked them all in the oven, like a great tomato tower, thus reducing production time by half or close to half. That’s all very speculative, though.
Definitely do make sure you’ve got enough surface area cleaned prepped to accommodate the production because the alternative will drive you bonkers.
The other thing you should know about this recipe is that it’s pretty skimpy when it comes to seasonings and that’s because it’s my recipe made to my preference and I really want my sauce to taste really tomatoey and pretty neutral so I can season it more fully later, depending on the application…or not because hot damn, do I love a bowl of rigatoni with a simple roasted tomato sauce, a chiffonade of fresh basil and a little cheese, like so:
Which is exactly what I do as soon as this sauce comes out of the oven.
What can I say? I am a simple lass.
What you need:
-
- 1/2 bushel of good quality plum/Roma tomatoes (also known as “paste tomatoes”), washed, cored (I don’t actually core them, as such, I just chop off the stem end and toss the remnants into ye olde bouillon bag) and halved
- 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil
- 2 large yellow onions, cut into large dice
- 20 cloves of garlic, smashed (when I say “smashed”, this is what I mean:
- 2 tbsp ground nutmeg
- 2 tbsp demerara sugar or 1/4 cup vodka or whiskey (do not skip this ingredient as it’s essential to caramelization! the boozes taste far less sugary than the sugar, but will still caramelize)
- 2 tbsp dried greek oregano
- 1 tbsp kosher salt
- 1 tbsp ground black pepper
What you do:
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
- Sploosh about 1 tablespoon of oil into each of your roasting pans.
- Mix the nutmeg, sugar or booze, oregano, salt and pepper into the remaining oil.
- Arrange your tomato halves in a single layer in each roasting pan. I use the top and bottom of a rather large turkey roaster. Each piece takes up a whole rack of the oven and I can fit in half of a half bushel in between the two of them, which means I need to do two rounds of cooking in order to process the entire bushel (unless I could make tomato mountain as I suggested the pre-amble above). You might have a more space-conscious solution, just don’t overcrowd the tomatoes too much or you will end up with tomatoes that are more stewed than roasted, which can also be delicious, but a completely different kind of delicious.
- Sprinkle the onion and garlic evenly across your pans of tomatoes, then drizzle the oil and seasoning mixture over them.
- Pop them into the oven and cook for one hour at 300, turning halfway through.
- After the hour, turn them again, increase the oven temperature to 425 and roast for another hour, turning halfway through again.
- If you want a deeper sauce, cook for another 15-30 minutes. I like a brighter sauce, so an hour is perfect for that.
- Remove from oven and set aside to cool.
- Repeat as/if necessary until all of the tomatoes have been roasted and cooled.
- Use an immersion blender to sauce it up according to your consistency preferences. I like to do it right in the pan and really blend one full pan into a purée, then leave the remaining bits a little chunkier so when they’re all mixed together, there’s a good mix of the two consistencies.
- Divide between freezer bags or, if you have the equipment, can it up. I like to freeze bunches of it in large freezer bags (which hold about a kilo of sauce) and medium freezer bags (which hold about 500 grams of sauce) so I’m not committed to thawing more than I might need for any given application – a meal of rigatoni will only need a 500 gram bag, but a lasagna will need a kilo bag. I get between 5 and 6 kilos out of this sauce.
- Give your empty half bushel box to a kitty because it’s the right thing to do.
And then have a listen to Gorillaz’ Clint Eastwood because you now have sunshine in a bag:
melanisms 