ROASTING TOMAOTES

Tomatoes are coming on pretty strong, basil is bushy, beautiful and oh so aromatic, garlic is dry in the old milk house, and my onions unfortunately  have suffered the heat/drought of the summer, and I find them quite small.  Still I am using them and supplementing with Amish grown.

I know I have posted a recipe for my roasted tomato sauce and roasted pizza sauce in the past, but I have had so many requests for these recipes this summer that I thought I would post it once again.  

I have been roasting tomatoes about every other day for a while now, and anticipate this continuing for several weeks.  Perhaps my favorite part of doing this, is the smell that permeates my kitchen while the sauces are roasting.  Honestly, I wish I could capture that aroma in a photo and post it here for all to enjoy!  Still I love the entire procedure, the gathering from my organic garden, handling and cleaning the produce, preparing it for the oven, and either canning or freezing the results.  There seems little that can top this, as it so readily connects me in some deep fashion to the land, to the old ones and the old ways, and to the future as well.

Begin by assembling the tomatoes, the basil, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Cleaned and ready for the pan.  I use a 9"x13" glass pan for the tomato sauce and as I don't have two, a smaller one for the pizza sauce.

The steps are entirely the same for both the tomato sauce and the pizza sauce except for one, pizza sauce gets a good helping of dried oregano.  I use the dried instead of fresh because it is far more pungent.  Heavily olive oil the pans, brushing the oil up on the sides and being sure that there is plenty of oil in the bottom of the pan.  It should look more than oiled, with a little extra oil in pan.

Cut up tomatoes (do not peel), onions, garlic, basil...

this is about how much basil I use per pan.  The other ingredients are not measured.  I fill the pan nearly to the top with cut up tomatoes, add one large or two small, or more cut up onions, one very large or two/three small garlic cloves chopped, lots and lots of basil, salt and pepper and a small amount of sugar.  If you are also doing pizza sauce it is at this point you would add the oregano to that pan.  Stir it all with a large spoon, and set in a 375 degree preheated oven.  You should watch this not too closely, but every half hour or so give it a good stir.  The basil that sits at the top can get dark, but in my opinion, that doesn't hurt a thing.  (You should start enjoying the aroma within the first half hour.)

Just out of the oven...

Roast until it reaches your desired thickness, for me it is generally two to three hours.  I also have roasted an hour, shut oven off, gone biking, come back it has continued to thicken, turn oven on and roast another hour or so, etc.  It certainly isn't a precise 'science'.

Once out of the oven, let it cool.  At this point you can do one of two things;  fill containers and freeze, or you can can it.  If you are going to can it you need to add 2 tbs lemon juice or 1/2 tsp. citric acid to each quart before processing for 45 minutes in a hot water bath. (I find that the addition of the acid does not alter the taste when used.)  Prior to doing either of these things, if you do not like chunky sauce, once cooled you can buzz it in a blender.  This pulverizes all the skins and seeds, and becomes a smooth sauce.

My grandmother and mother did not do this with the sauce, but a few years ago with an overabundance of tomatoes and little time, I wondered if there were a faster, easier way.  I played around with roasting, and this recipe emerged.  I love it, and this is mostly what I do now.

Well, not only are the tomatoes abundant, but of course the zucchini are as well.  I have made multiple loaves of zucchini bread, and lots of muffins.  But here is one of our favorite ways to eat zucchini.

Zucchini Patties

Shredded zucchini, chopped onion and garlic, seasoned (Italian) bread crumbs, an egg, fresh parsley chopped, salt and pepper...mix together as for meatballs, and press into patties.  I then press each patty into Panko bread crumbs.  Heat olive oil or canola oil in a fry pan, fry until crisp, turn fry until crisp.

As they fry, I press down on them gently.

These are smelling pretty good at this point, and if you so desire

Add a little cheese and let melt.

When serving at the table I top each patty with a mixture of

chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic, basil and wine vinegar and olive oil...salt and pepper.  (This mixture is hard to resist on its own, and I greedily scarfed down the remaining mixture.)

I served this with fresh corn on the cob, and bread just out of the oven, and fresh muskmelon.  A great meal.