Robin Garr is one of Eric’s favorite wine writers. He also writes a food letter which Eric and I occasionally will try recipes from called the Wine Advisor Food Letter. Today, with a large quantity of heirloom and roma tomatoes from a garden available, Eric convinced me to try making his recipe for fresh tomato sauce. I typically make tomato sauce from scratch, but to save time, I practically always use canned tomatoes, so I was excited to try this one out. The recipe was more of a guideline, and if you don’t have a Foley food mill, I would suggest you ignore this recipe or go out and buy yourself one.
Ingredients
1. About 5 pounds (2 kilos) fresh, ripe tomatoes (plum tomatoes such as Romas are best for sauce, but any fresh garden tomato will do)
2. 1 large sweet white or yellow onion
3. Several sprigs of fresh basil
4. 2 tablespoons (30ml) good olive oil
5. Sea salt
6. Black pepper
3. Several sprigs of fresh basil
4. 2 tablespoons (30ml) good olive oil
5. Sea salt
6. Black pepper
Directions
1. Cut the tomatoes into large chunks and put them in a large non-reactive pan (most experts advise avoiding aluminum to avoid off flavors, although a hard anodized aluminum surface is OK).
2. Peel the onion and cut it into chunks, and put them in with the tomatoes. Add the whole basil sprigs, the olive oil and a bit of salt and pepper. (Be discreet with the seasoning. You can always add more when you use the sauce in recipes, but you can't take it out.)
3. Bring the tomatoes to a boil over high heat, stirring and mashing the tomato pieces occasionally. The natural juice of the tomatoes will provide all the liquid you need. When it boils, reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook until the tomatoes are soft but not overcooked. About 30 minutes is plenty. The key to this sauce is freshness and simplicity. If you want to make a sweet, caramelized Italian-American "gravy," you can always put some sauce and a lot of garlic over low heat and simmer it for hours later on.
4. Put the entire contents of a pan through a Foley food mill (an inexpensive and useful accessory that should be available anywhere kitchen supplies are sold). If you don't have a food mill, you can force the sauce through a large strainer, but it's a lot more work. In any case, the point is to separate smooth, flavorful pulp from the tomato skins and seeds, which at this point will have given all their flavor to the sauce.
(Makes about 3 quarts of sauce)
Notes:
The tomatoes we had ended up releasing quite a bit of extra water, so we had to cook the sauce for longer than 30 minutes to get the consistency that we desired. Also, we weren’t planned on freezing it, so we did all of the cooking up front.
-Anna
