Keep some summer all year with a roasted tomato sauce stash
Keep some summer all year with a roasted tomato sauce stash
When August hits, I make a point to enjoy summer like it’s going out of season. Some of my favorite ways of doing so involve tomatoes, and I treat it like my job to eat a year’s worth of the ripest, juiciest, most delicious tomatoes I can get my face on.
I also make time to stash away those glorious fruits for year-round enjoyment, in the form of a simple oven-roasted tomato sauce. At the end of every summer I freeze this universal ingredient, shooting for quantities that will stretch through the winter.
If my soup needs a little more tang, my sauce is just the thing. If it’s eggplant Parmesan, tomato sauce is in the equation. On top of spaghetti, snuck into deer curry, on a whole pizza to feed the family, or with toast and cheese when I’m feeling lazy.
Toward the end of tomato season, the glorious red spheroids that are best for sauce are at their very cheapest. Anyone with a garden — or anyone with a neighbor with a garden — has tomatoes of their own right now, even as farmers are bringing more boxes than ever to market.
I don’t often go for deals at the farmers market. I usually don’t like bargaining with farmers, because they work too hard. But this time of year, they don’t want to bring home any boxes of tomatoes any more than you want a sauce-free winter. Wait until the tail end and see if you and your favorite farmer can find a confluence of interests: They get some freedom from a box of tomatoes, and cash, and you get a project, and sauce.
For every four pounds of tomatoes, you’ll need an onion, three cloves of garlic, and a half-cup each of grated carrots and zucchini, so pick up those items while you’re there, too.
Don’t mess around with heirlooms because they have too much water and not enough acid. The shiny round orbs the color of sports cars that get more speeding tickets, also known as tomatoes that look like tomatoes, are the tomatoes that make the best sauce. Big red tomatoes, small red tomatoes, red paste tomatoes.
The ripe bounty of the harvest — and the cool mornings, lazy afternoons and dwindling evenings of summer — stashed away before the frosty breath of fall stops the music.