Fresh Tomato Sauce

I always plant Roma tomatoes in the garden, because they are so versatile. They also have a high yield, so they lend themselves to making sauce. I picked about ten pounds of tomatoes out of the garden yesterday, and it's impossible even for piggies like us to eat all of them before they go bad. Last year, I peeled them and froze them, and I just threw them out because I never used them. This year, it's all about fresh tomato sauce.

To make the sauce, you need to peel the tomatoes. In French technical terms this is called concasse (kon ka say). To start, remove the stems, wash, and cut an X on the bottom of the tomatoes.


Put tomatoes in rapidly boiling water in batches for 1 minute.


Remove to an ice bath to cool and shrink the skins.


Then, the skins come right off.


Once you have done this, you can simply can them, or chop them and put in pasta or in a salad. In this case, I pureed them in a food processor, pressed them through a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds, and simmered the sauce in a heavy bottomed dutch oven for 3 hours until it had reduced by 2/3. The resulting tomato sauce bursts with fresh tomato taste. Tonight we'll be using this sauce as a base for chile rellenos. Stay tuned!