Home-Grown Tomato Sauce: From Garden to Stovetop to Pantry

This year I grew my very first garden. If you have read the Gourmet Weekday recently, then you have probably seen a photo or two of my highly prized veggies. I have been nurturing these plants since May, first as tiny seedlings which cluttered all of the windowsills inside my home, then as fragile sprouts left to weather the elements outside after I planted them, and finally as fully grown plants which are producing - well, the fruits of my labor. 

If you can't tell, I have become very attached to my garden. Of course, nature happens (so do inexperienced gardeners), and many of the plants have died before their time. I lost most of my zukes and summer squash to a beetle invasion, and an entire row of string beans got eaten by a gopher whose time on this earth is limited, if I have anything to do with it.  And it nearly broke my heart when I went outside after one of last week's violent storms to find two of my tomato plants uprooted, and the tomatoes smushed into the mud with creepy beetles crawling all over them. 

Still, I have been so blessed with a bountiful garden. Despite the tomato plant disaster, I still have an entire row of tomatoes which are growing, growing, growing. Heirlooms, Beefsteak, Cherries, Romas. They are producing faster than this little husband-wife duo can consume! 

 I have given some away to friends and chopped tons up and thrown them into every meal I've made, but I am still swamped with them. I couldn't stand to see a single tomato go to waste. So I did what any self-respecting gardener-in-training would do and I asked my mom how to can stuff.

My mom sent me home with her water-bather, which is used to boil and seal canned goods.

 The thing is huge. After I was done using it, I had to have my husband put it in the bathtub to cool so I could use the stovetop to cook supper!  Now, this was my first time ever canning something, and I haven't tried out the canned sauce yet, so for this blog's purposes, let's just focus on the making the sauce part. 

An American in Sicily wrote a wonderfully simple recipe for homemade tomato sauce, and this is the one which I followed to make my sauce. The entire process took about 2 1/2 hours, but once you make a big batch of homemade sauce (skip the whole canning process altogether if you'd rather and just freeze it), you will have it on hand for pastas, pizzas, and dipping for weeknights to come. This is a good Sunday afternoon project, and it will make your entire kitchen smell incredible. 

So let's get started!

Ingredients

• TONS of fresh tomatoes. I hear Romas make a great sauce, but I just used a mixture of whatever I had on hand from my garden. I also didn't weigh the amount of tomatoes I used - just eyeball it, people :)
• 1 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 1/3 dried herbs. I used basil, oregano, thyme, and rosemary.
• 4-6 dried bay leaves
• 6-7 minced garlic cloves
• Salt

Directions

1. First thing's first: you have to chop up all of those tomatoes. In retrospect, I realized that it would have made much more sense to peel the tomatoes and also remove their seeds to avoid unwanted chunkiness that was difficult to strain. So do that, and then chop. Throw the chopped tomatoes into a large stockpot. 
2. Next, add all the other ingredients to the pot.
   
   
   
3. Mix the ingredients together with a wooden spoon. Then, use a potato masher to mash up the large tomato chunks.
   
   
4. Cover, then bring the mixture to a boil.  Once the sauce is boiling, reduce heat to low and allow the sauce to simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Remove the cover for last 20-30 minutes, which allows the sauce to thicken some. 
5. For this next step, a tomato strainer would come in very helpful. However, as an amateur sauce-maker, the best I could come up with was a strainer in a bowl. I say do what you gotta do. Carefully pour the sauce into strainer and, using a spatula, push the sauce through the strainer.                                                                                                                              
   
                                                                                                                                                         This will remove some of the large peels from the sauce. Straining for me was difficult, both because I didn't have a tomato strainer and because I didn't peel my tomatoes. Luckily my husband and I like our tomato sauce chunky!
   
6. Once you strain your sauce, taste test it. Does it need salt? More garlic? More wine? Maybe you'd like to add some onions before you add it to tonight's meal? Make these changes, and reserve what sauce you need for the meal at hand. Jar up the rest, and freeze or can it. 
   

I served my home-grown tomato sauce over a place of linguine with baked meatballs and a side of no-knead whole wheat bread. It was delizioso! How will you serve your sauce? Share your ideas and comments below!

Happy Saucing,

Deidre

Summer Steak Tip Salad with Dijon Dressing

Honesty is the best policy, so I think it's only right that I be straight up and tell you that this post was actually supposed to be for a different salad.  This salad included chunks of caramelized pears and pecans, crumbles of Gorgonzola, and spicy little baby arugula (my new favorite green!). It looked incredible and super gourmet but the fact is - I destroyed it. My husband forgot to bring home the arugula, so I replaced the green with spinach. He also could not find pecans - but I had a few almonds shoved in the back of my cupboard that I salvaged. Most horrifyingly, I burnt the caramel for the pears and discovered this fact only after I dropped all of the pears into the concoction, said, "What is that vile smell?" and tasted a chunk, only to feel like vomiting. 

So... there it is. I was forced to be a little innovative last night, like we all sometimes must. Luckily, my fridge was jam-packed with fresh fruit and berries, and I was still able to make the delicious dressing that the original salad called for. 

I have found in my first year of marriage that the only sure-fire way to ensure that my husband will eat a salad without complaint is to throw some meat on top of it. This rule especially applies when the salad is the main course. For this reason, steak tips have become my best friend. They are quick-cooking, blend well with a vast variety of flavors, and are reliably delicious.  And let me tell you, I was glad to have them to hold my salad all together last night.

So here's the recipe for my new, spur-of-the-moment Summer Steak Tip Salad. Serve with the homemade Dijon dressing (original recipe here) or a light raspberry vinaigrette.

Ingredients

• 4 cups chopped spinach
• 1 chopped red delicious apple
• 2 cups sliced strawberries
• 1 cup blueberries
• 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
• 1/2 cup almonds, pecans, or walnuts
• 3/4 lb steak tips, sliced into bite-sized pieces
• 1 tbs olive oil

For the dressing

• 1 tbs Dijon mustard
• 3 tbs red wine or red wine vinegar
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Heat olive oil over medium heat until sizzling. Add steak to pan and saute 2-3 minutes on each side, or until it has reached desired temperature. My husband the Spicemaster helped here, and added a secret variety of spices which he never revealed.  My advice here is to just add lots of cracked black pepper, and then anything else you love to give it a juicy flavor kick.
2. Meanwhile, chop spinach, apple, and strawberries and layer ingredients in a large bowl. Top with the blueberries.
   
   
   
3. When steak is cooked, remove from pan with tongs and transfer onto the salad. Sprinkle with feta cheese and almonds.
4. The dressing can be made in advance, but I prefer it fresh as can be, and it's easy to whip up. Just add all the ingredients together in a small bowl and whisk together. Taste test before serving - I decided to go a little heavier on the wine (surprise, surprise) to make sure the Dijon was not too overpowering. Serve on the side or drizzle over the top of the salad. 
   

Much to my delight, after I served my husband a large plate of this salad (which I overloaded with steak in an effort to ease the pain of having salad for dinner), he reached back into the bowl with the tongs and gave himself a hearty helping of spinach and said, "What? I gotta get my greens." 

Despite the original salad recipe being a flop, I was pleased with the way this one turned out. The sweet and savory combination of flavors made it satisfying and summery. And my husband finished it off after devouring his first serving, scooping out every last bit of healthiness out of the bowl. And so there you have it - men can eat just salad for dinner. 

Happy cooking,

Deidre