Some Tomato Recipes

My tomatoes are ripening and we’re fighting the blackbirds for them.  Hubby and I discussed the priorities for things to do with tomatoes and I started with tomato sauce.  I think with each picking, I’ll cycle through these recipes.  I’ve certainly got plenty of tomatoes, well, that is if the blackbirds don’t eat too many more.

I love my old Good Housekeeping Board cookbook for this type of recipe.  The recipes that I find in modern cookbooks just don’t seem to work the same.  Their tomato sauces are light and bland in comparison to the thick, rich, spicy sauces that come from the older books.

The added bonus for me was that for the first time ever, it’s purely my own tomatoes, apples and onions going into this.  I’ve had to use red onions as my brown onions didn’t have a very good season and I’ve got red onions to spare.

Tomato Sauce

1.5kg tomatoes, roughly chopped

600g apples, cored and roughly choppped

Tomato Sauce Right at the Start

500g onions, roughly chopped

600g raw sugar

2 tbsp salt

Tie together in a muslin bag (or chux-style cloth):

1/2 tbsp cloves

1/2 tbsp allspice

1/2 tsp peppercorns

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp cayenne

Boil all together for an hour.  Strain and bottle when cool.

This came to 1.75 litres of thick rich tomato sauce.  I don’t strain my sauces as such, I put them through a mouli with the smallest holed blade.  In the past, I’ve left the spices loose in the sauce and processed them with the fruit and veges.  It doesn’t seem to make a great deal of difference either way.

Processing Through the Mouli

Next on the list is Spaghetti.  I made some a few weeks ago as a test batch - first time I’d tried my father in law’s recipe.  Hubby had requested it as he and Miss Seven eat a lot of spaghetti.

Spaghetti

12 lb tomatoes

1 lb onions

3/4 C sugar

3 tbsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 lb spaghetti noodles

Boil tomatoes and onions.  Simmer for 1 hour, then mouli.

Cook spaghetti in boiling salted water, drain and rinse in cold water.

Bring tomato pulp to boil, add spaghetti, salt, sugar and pepper.  Boil for 20 mins.  Bottle.

Tomato Sauce and Two of the Jars of Spaghetti

They liked the test batch, although the comment was made that I needed to process the sauce better - I’d used the coarse blade in the mouli, the smallest holed one would have been better.  Also that there was a lot of sauce at the top of the jar.  The ratio of spaghetti to sauce wasn’t right.

I’ve made some more and I more than doubled the amount of spaghetti noodles.  Hubby and Miss Seven like it a lot better.

The other thing that I make and use a lot of is a tomato puree which can also be easily made into tomato paste.

The quantities are completely random, based on what you have, but I like to have a similar ratio of tomatoes to onions as both the sauce and spaghetti recipes.  I also add in garlic, basil and oregano.

Boil all together, mouli and pour into an oven dish.  Put your oven on it’s lowest setting, usually somewhere between 50 and 100 degrees Celsius and leave slowly thickening for hours.  Until it reaches the right consistency.  As it thickens, the colour will darken and the flavour will get stronger.

Tomato Paste Just Out of the Oven

I’ve never put this in jars, it doesn’t have either vinegar, salt or sugar as a preservative, so I like to put it into margarine pots and freeze it.  A 500g margarine pot works out to be an ideal size for a meal.

See the links below for more inspiration and ideas.