chickelit said...
Troop. (or anybody): what about when you start with fruits off the vine? Which tomato species are the best? And how do you get from the whole tomato to what the put in cans?
I sometimes cook with fresh tomatoes in the summer. In Cali you probably have a bigger selection since tomatoes come in all year round. What you need to do is get the skin off. So boil a pot of water and drop the tomato right in. In about a minute or two the skin should be soft so you can peel it right off like you were one of those serial killers in "Criminal Minds" who is skinning a coed. Just take the skin off and put it in your food processor. You don't want to have the skins messing up your sauce as they are hard to chew.
Now you want to pulse it a couple of times. If you just blend it you are in effect getting tomato puree. You want it chunky and country style.
Personally I like Pomi crushed tomatoes. Or even crushed tomatoes already in the can. If you use tomato puree you need to add a small can of tomato paste to thicken it up. One can of paste to every two cans of puree.
I personally only use san marzano whole plum tomato when using cans. Once again you put it in the food processor and pluse it a few time. Or alternately when I go camping I just squeeze them through my fingers and cut up the bigger pieces with a small paring knife. But plusing it a few times works best. You want a big cut where you can see the chunks.
A quick fresh tomato sauce recipe:
Ten ripe plum tomatoes
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 glass of red wine
3 Cloves of garlic
1 Large bunch of basil
Mince up the garlic and saute in some olive oil. Drop the plum tomatoes in the boiling water as I said above until you see them start to burst out of their skins. Fish out with your spider and strip off the skin. Be careful because they are hot. A safe way to do it is to put it in a bowl of ice water and it will strip right off without you burning your fingers off. Then put the tomatoes in a food process and pluse it a couple of times to chop it up. NOT TOO MUCH OR YOU GET PUREE!!!!!
Debide the pan with the wine and cook a minute. Then add the tomatoes. Stir in the salt, sugar and pepper. Bring to a soft boil and then simmer. About ten minutes before serving put in a bunch of basil leaves. Of course you washed them you slob! Strip off the leaves without any stems as they can be bitter. Float a bunch of them in the sauce. It will give a nice flavor and it looks nice too!
That will give you a chunky country style sauce.
A couple of serving suggestions:
Crack four eggs into the sauce and cook them sunny side up in the sauce. Serve on a flat dish with a loaf of Italian bread.
Add a cup of rice (cooked of course) and a cup of peas and mush around. That is one of my favorite comfort foods. Think of it as a broken rice ball. So to speak.
Mangia!
14 comments:
Mmm, tomatoes...
You can buy seeds if you are patient or sets to get a jump on the growing season. I would imagine there are varietals, also, and maybe some yellow or other colors available.
I ate two tomatoes last year - I really like them, buy them in season at the Farmers Market, but they don't like me so much. So it goes.
Grow some, cook 'em up, enjoy!
My dad used to call women "sweet tomato" or just "tomato" in a deragatory way.
Have you been psychoanalized, Titus? Maybe you dad had something to do with the way you turned out and your eagerness to leave Wisconsin.
Have you been psychoanalized, Titus?
Shrinks are expensive. To save a few bucks, I recommend starting with the good Dr Scholls's Magic Foot Machine, to determine if he's even gellin.
Podiatristy is to blame?
It's all about the feat, chickelit.
Egads MamaM--what can I do to shake this avian image you have of me? Expose more of myself?
In Cali you probably have a bigger selection since tomatoes come in all year round.
The season is indeed long. The Imperial Valley grows year round. We're colder here summers and the season is more like 6 months.
Expose more of myself?
Wattle, Wattle, and he wattled away?
No chickelit, the pic was for the plucked chicken in Aisle 3 who is slowly farting his way toward the Shoe Machine over in Pharmacy.
For chopping fresh tomatoes like the ones Trooper prepares, blanched and skinned, I use a rocker chopper in a big wooden bowl that I picked up in a Goodwill (or someplace like that) years ago. I find that the line between chopped and mush in the food processor is just to fine for me to control.
You can buy a new set like this one.....but I'm too cheap. I'll continue to use my thrift store set.
Thank God Trooper isn't groveling for pennies like Meade and Althouse with Amazon links. It is disgusting. No class.
I know a guy who makes wooden bowls to match an existing mezzaluna, if the customer so desires. Just sayin'...
And let us all be thankful Troop is not always shoving his portal in our direction.
This is killin' me.
I love good tomato sauce, made from the best tomatoes, herbs and spices. Love it!
Mrs. Haz now has arthritic hands. While it isn't really, really, bad, it's bad enough that she stopped playing piano a few years ago, and has now put her grand paino up for sale. She was a great pianist, so good that she was her parish's full-time organist when she was an 8th grade student.
Tomatoes aggravate arthritic inflammation, as do other members of the nightshade family - potatoes, eggplant and peppers. So no more red sauce; it makes the joints in her hands swell and ache.
I'll eat Italian for lunch sometimes now, but no more for dinner, whether at home or in a restaurant.
Northern Italian is still okay - fish, veal and so forth, just nothing with tomato sauce.
Haz, that is very sad indeed. I was a hack piano player, with more enthusiasm than talent, and had to stop playing a few years back. It was tough, so I can only imagine what your wife is going through - that is a big loss. Life can be difficult, and some say it is all about how we deal with our losses. Hang in there, both of you.
Real easy way is to roast whole tomatoes. Crank up the oven to 350. Wash and remove the core on as many tomatoes as you can fit in a single layer of a 9x13 Pyrex baking dish. Break 1 or 2 heads of garlic into cloves (no need to peel the skin will pop off) and wedge them in among the tomatoes. Drizzle the whole thing with red wine and EVOO, add a grind or two of black pepper, a big pinch of dried red peperoncini and a sprinkle of kosher salt (not too much). You can sprinkle on some roughly chopped basil or oregano if liked...the basil will turn black, it still tastes great.
Bake for an 60-90 minutes until the tomatoes are soft and a bit collapsed and the juices are bubbling away nicely. Remove from the oven and let cool to room temp.
The skins will slip right off and you can just spoon a tomato or two, a couple of garlic cloves and some the pan likker over hot pasta in a deep bowl or use them as the base for sauce.
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