Garden Tomato Sauce (the Italian way)
My husband and I are both Italian. Family and food are at the center of everything we do. Each summer, our big extended family gets together to take garden fresh tomatoes and turn them into delicious sauce to be canned for use all year. (although we usually run out by January if we don’t pace ourselves). This sauce is delicious, simple, and bursting with garden fresh flavor. It can be made and enjoyed fresh, or canned and preserved for a later meal.
All the ingredients in this recipe are grown in the garden here at Blueacre (except for olive oil.)
Ingredients:
5lbs Tomatoes - Paste or “sauce” tomatoes are best, but you can use beefsteak too. I grow Amish Paste, Roma, and San Marzano tomatoes to use
3 garlic cloves, smashed
3 tbsp olive oil
1 basil stem
Process your tomatoes. There are several ways to do this:
Halve the tomatoes and (carefully) run them across a cheese grater until you’ve separated the meaty part from the skin.
Halve the tomatoes and place them in a food mill to separate meaty part from the skin.
Score the tomatoes in an “x” pattern at the top and boil for 5 minutes. Remove from the water and carefully peel the flesh from the skin.
Run the tomatoes through a tomato processor machine (expensive, but fast and easy). After years of painstakingly trying to remove the tomato skins as they cooked down, we invested in the machine. What a difference in sauce quality and ease of production!
Into a large pot or dutch oven over medium heat, add the olive oil.
Once warmed, add the smashed garlic cloves and let it sit for 30 seconds. You don’t want to brown the garlic - just infuse the oil with their flavor
Add your tomatoes and stem of basil, and let it simmer. If you are using any method other than the tomato machine, you’ll need to let the sauce cook for a few hours to cook off the water content in the tomatoes.
Sunshine waiting under the tomato cutting table and praying that a few tomato scraps will fall down.
