cazalea[Seiko Moderator]
16932
Tomato Season!
Jul 23, 2022,18:51 PM
We are not in Italy, Spain or France but we do have one of the world's best climates for tomatoes. Every summer there are weeks when we have a surplus. Or the neighbors have a surplus and bring them to us.
These are all photos I have taken of our local crop.
We grow basil too.
Once in a great while I am moved to buy a few at the store:
We can deal with a dozen cherry tomatoes a day, but 20-50?
No way.
And we can manage a few big ones per day. But not multiple vines full of large tomatoes!
So this year I decided for the first time to melt them down into sauce. That entails removing the skins first.
I read that you can put them in boiling water for a minute, then in ice water, and the skins slip right off. My mother never told me these things (yes the one with the nose got cooked too).
Usually I separate the gold from red ones.
This week I realized I can throw pasta in the boiling water when the tomatoes are lifted out, and use that hot water productively to cook the pasta.
After ten minutes or so, I take the pasta out, throw it in a bowl with olive oil, and pour out the water.
The skins are off the tomatoes by now, so back into the hot pot they go (minus the water & pasta), with some basil, garlic and olive oil -- and maybe a bit of wine
or like this.
They start to look saucy in about 20 minutes. I have a stick blender but don't really need to do much blending as the tomatoes melt down nicely on their own. Maybe 45 minutes on low is enough.
In the meantime if I am super-organized, I am taking fresh bread out of the oven.
To use in consuming the sauce.
In this case I took the golden tomato sauce and put it on the pasta with some shrimp with lettuce underneath.
My wife gave it two thumbs up.
This is easy -- you can do it too.
Cazalea