Tomatoes: Round One

The making of pasta sauce begins with the single slash of a knife. Actually, it starts before that, but work with me here. It was a busy day in the kitchen...one whole busy day...but my effort was rewarded. Now I can do it again all day today. And again all day tomorrow. 

Earlier, I left the boys watching car racing on the upstairs TV. Smitty and Mike were rooting for the Corvettes in the 24-hour LeMans. Sadly, they came in second.

Down in the kitchen, I was stemming and halving Roma tomatoes and packing them onto baking sheets to be roasted and skinned. They look like soldiers going off to war.

There was a time when I did this the conventional way of scoring, blanching, and then skinning. A few years ago, I started roasting them in a 425°F. oven for about 20 minutes. I can fit two baking sheets in the oven. When time is up, the top ones will be more roasted than the bottom rack. I switch the bottom rack to the top and add a new one, and then continue on until they're all done.

As for the top rack, when the skins are shriveled like this, some with spotty brown areas, they can be picked off with tongs. If they're cool enough to handle, you can pick them off with your fingers. It's so much easier than the blanching method. Some people like to dehydrate and crumble the skins into powder. I'm told it's excellent added to soups and stews, but I've never tried it. In my kitchen...just the sauce, Man.

A drawback of doing it this way is that your yield will be a little less, but I'm happier for less hassle. Also, there will be quite a bit of tomato liquid on the baking sheet when you remove the tomatoes. I save the liquid separately. If I decide to do some plain canned tomatoes, I'll add it to the jars when I fill them with tomatoes. If not, it can be added to soups for a nice burst of tomato flavor. Think of it as tomato stock.

Okay, so tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, add some more ingredients, and you've got yourself a nice Chunky Basil Pasta Sauce cooking on the stove top. I've linked to the recipe there, but know that I always double the recipe and pack it into quarts. It takes a long time to cook it down to sauce consistency. Don't be fooled by those optimistic numbers in the recipe. I'm using an 8-quart stainless steel Dutch oven for this. 

You can see it fills this large pot to about an inch from the top. I'll cook this down until the level is about one-inch less. It takes around one hour. My yield yesterday was 4 quarts plus a nearly a full fifth quart. I'll finish that one off with today's effort.

But that wasn't my only goal with yesterday's tomato business. I still wanted another batch of Basic Tomato Salsa. I shared the recipe for this just the other day, but here's how it looks when it goes into the pot. (I made a mistake by adding the cilantro in at the beginning. It's actually supposed to be added when the cooking is finished. No worries, though. I added some more at the end.)

By the end of the day, I had 4 quarts (plus a bonus in the fridge) of pasta sauce, and 5-1/2 pints of salsa. Adding that to what's already on the shelf gives me 10 pints of salsa. The salsa was made from our own tomatoes, with just a few added from our farmers. That oughta hold us for a while on salsa.

I'm committed to doing a 20-pound box of tomatoes each day until they're finished. That means today is day two with one more day tomorrow. Today should be a little easier since I'll only be doing pasta sauce from here on, and no more salsa. Already I have enough tomatoes prepared for half a batch, and so I expect to be processing two batches of pasta sauce today. If my yield holds, I should have another 8 quarts by the end of the day. On the other hand, you really should consider the adage about hatching chickens and not count your jars before they're lidded and processed. 

This morning I'll do some slow-stitching, and then I need to check in on the vegetables in the garden. You never know what they're plotting until you check the harvest. I'm sure there are more beans and zucchini, and I'm really wanting those melons to ripen. We'll be leaving two weeks from today, and so it would be nice to eat some now and take some along. On a positive note, I've learned they will ripen off the vine. Yesterday I inquired of my friend The Google about this, and The Google responded by giving me this link that tells me how to do it. One way or another, we'll get some cantaloupe this year. 

Also, I've noticed the plums are softening. I'll pick enough of those for barbecue sauce, but I'll just pit and freeze them until we get back from our trip. We're having the kids up for dinner on Sunday, and I should have plums to make an Original Plum Torte. Here's one I made last year:

If you click right here, you'll find the recipe, but it also has an interesting story behind it. This is one of my annual recipes...every year when the plums ripen, I make it. Yum. I don't think I've ever made it for the kids, so that will be a treat. We're going to have plenty of corn too. The corn is so sweet and tender. Despite all the canning I'm doing this week, I'm looking forward to cooking dinner and seeing the family later this week.

The only other canning I want to do before declaring an end to the season is to make applesauce. I've been waiting for Oregon Heritage Farms to open so I can get some of their lovely Gravensteins. They are expected to open on Saturday, and so I'll pick up some apples and get to work on those next week. I'll probably have forgotten the pain of canning tomatoes by then. 

Okay, so another box of tomatoes...coming up. And just one more day of this tomorrow. I think I'll survive another year of tomatoes. Whenever I open a jar of pasta sauce, I'll remember why I put myself through this.