Thing Forty-One: Garden pasta sauce

[badseed1980]

This year, I decided to grow Roma tomatoes for the first time. I had previously grown tomatoes that were great for eating raw in salads or sliced onto sandwiches or burgers, but none that were really good for cooking. Romas are probably the epitome of a cooking tomato, so I planted two of those this year. In the past week, it seems like they decided to suddenly have oodles and oodles of fruit come ripe all at once. I knew I needed to use some up, pronto. Given that I also have a bounty of Mediterranean herbs growing in my deck garden, I decided pasta sauce was the way to go. This is the first time in a long time I've done process-pictures of a cooking endeavor, so there are tons of photos under the cut.


First, I picked a whole bunch of ripe tomatoes. Aren't they beautiful?


Next, I got my other veggies ready. I don't grow bell peppers, but a sweet Cubanelle from the garden did nicely.


I chopped it up, along with some onion, and grated some zucchini and carrot. Those veggies weren't from my garden, but from the farmers' market.


You can pretend there's some minced garlic on there too, because I minced some garlic just after taking that picture. It was messy on that cutting board by then, though, so I didn't re-shoot.

To ensure the sauce wouldn't have bits of tomato skin here and there in it, I peeled my tomatoes. This is actually easier than you might think. Boil some water, and when it's boiling, get a bowl of ice water ready nearby. Drop your tomatoes into the boiling water (not too many at a time, or it will cool off too much), and let them swim around in there for about a minute. Then, scoop them out and drop them into the ice water. Once you've done this, the skins will peel right off with no problems.

Ramsay Bolton was here. Sorry, too much A Song of Ice and Fire in my life lately.

Next, I heated up my trusty Dutch Oven, poured in a little olive oil, and started to saute the chopped veggies. It was steamy in there, so forgive the blurriness.


When they started getting soft, I deglazed the pan with some Italian vermouth. I would have liked to use a dry red wine, but since my fiance is temporarily abstaining from alcohol, I didn't want to open up a whole bottle and risk not finishing it before it went off. Then, I threw in the tomatoes. (Oh yeah, and I seeded and chopped those babies first.) I put in a bay leaf and some salt and pepper, too.


I like just a hint of spice in my pasta sauce, so I threw in some crushed red pepper.

Don't be fooled! This isn't really Penzey's! It's actually little hot Italian peppers and cayenne peppers that I grew in my garden a couple years ago and dried.

I let that stuff simmer for a while with the cover on, stirring it every now and then. The tomatoes broke down over time, and when it was looking pretty close to done after an hour or more, I added in some herbs: oregano, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, basil, and parsley--all from the garden.


I minced those up, and threw them into the sauce. Then, looking at it, I decided I wanted the sauce thicker, but didn't want to cook it down too much more because I wanted the volume. I decided to...cheat.

Yeah, that's how we freeze leftover tomato paste in my house. It makes it easy to break off as much as you need to use without defrosting the lot. In this case, I used all that was left in that bag.

I let it simmer for a little while longer to meld the flavors. The finished product tasted wonderful, with all the herbs adding complexity, and the brightness of the tomatoes really coming through.


And that's my story!

Comments

[contrarywise]

Wow, it all looks delish! Congrats and bon appetit!!