Tuesday, 5 February 2013

Tomato passata...summer garden harvest

We arrived home to a glut of tomatoes.  Amazingly they had survive extreme heat and a cyclone of rain and were hanging plumply off the vines, splitting with ripeness.  The Voice of Reason and I stepped into Martha Stewart mode, picked a bucket (and I mean bucket) of the ripest ones and started cooking.  My contribution was a passata to use with mince for lasagna or bolagnese, Miss J's was eating tomatoes like apples straight out the bucket, the VoR experimented with a secret recipe tomato sauce (delicious).  
Both turned out really well but I can only share the passata with you, the sauce is as I said before, secret.  Hopefully you are enjoying the tomato harvest bounty too.


Ingredients:
As many ripe tomatoes as you want to make into passata.
1kg of tomatoes made 1 litre of passata.
A combined handful of rosemary, oreganum, thyme.
10 - 12 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup of olive oil

To make:
Cut tomatoes in half and place in roasting pan with unpeeled garlic cloves and fresh herbs.
Add the remaining ingredients and place pan in a slow oven (160) for an hour, or until tomatoes have softened.
Remove from oven and cool.
Once cool remove garlic skins, they should pop off easily. 
Place tomato mixture in a blender and blend until smooth.  You can pass the passata through a sieve if you want a really fine sauce but I can't be bothered.
Store your delicious passata in sterilised jars or bottles, or freeze, and end enjoy long after summer harvest is over.

We ate the left overs as a thick fragrant tomato soup.
Totally delicious & totally simple, especially when the tomatoes are out of your own garden.



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