Wednesday, September 10

Hot tomatoes

Cooking up a batch of summer's abundance

View a video of the process of making Roasty Sauce:

Every year, I plant too many tomatoes.

My biggest joy in life is tending plants, and of course I want to try every variety on the planet. (There's always that just-in, mythical, melt-in-your-mouth tomato that has been rediscovered in the Nepalese ranges, where it was husbanded by someone's Russian grandmother—who found the seeds in a patch of Sasquatch dung in the 1800s.)

But where I fall down is figuring out how to use all those vegetables.

Living alone and being a light eater to boot, I'm easily overwhelmed by the abundance. Sure, farmers' markets and food pantries are an option for someone who grows so much so easily, but that would require actually leaving the garden for hours at a time (horrors!)—totally not my style.

So, entire sacks of basil rot in my fridge, and ever more tomato plants sprout where much of last year's crop rotted on the ground. Eggplants? I eat one and the rest sit on the counter for awhile before going directly into the compost once my neighbors have had their fill.

But finally, a solution to the angst and guilt my garden produces every fall: Roasty Sauce!

This is the basic recipe:

4 pounds tomatoes, quartered
1 large onion, quartered
2 jalapeno peppers (remove seeds for less heat)
3 heads fresh garlic
1/4 c. olive oil
1 T. dry oregano (or a bunch of fresh oregano & basil)

Combine all ingredients in a 9x13 inch pan. Roast at 450 degrees for 1-1/2 to 2 hours, until juices get thick. Tomatoes will blacken and smell wonderful. Run through a food mill to remove skins and seeds. The resulting puree will be nice and thick; no need to reduce. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

This recipe was posted on a gardening site a couple of years ago and has drawn raves ever since. It was posted by my friend Kim, who got it from her boyfriend, who doesn't remember where he got it.

So there you have it, even though its provenance sounds like the cooking version of an Internet hoax (See "Sasquatch tomato," above).

As is, Roasty Sauce is delectable. But that whole weighing of tomatoes and messing around with a food mill are too prissy for me and my garden, which produces about 12 pounds of tomatoes every day for two months. That's 700-plus pounds of tomatoes, folks. Measuring out 4 pounds here and there won't do—I need to live larger!

So here is my "Tomato Terminator" version:

Dig out your turkey-roasting pan. Drizzle olive oil (the cheap stuff) over the sides and bottom. Fill the pan with about 15 pounds of quartered tomatoes, then top with 5 pounds of onions, peppers (both sweet and hot), and 4-5 heads of garlic. Throw in a couple handfuls of fresh basil and oregano, add a few sprigs of rosemary, and finish off the whole shebang with a liberal pouring of oil. Heft the pan into a 450-degree oven. Roast. Rinse pan. Repeat.

This juicy concoction can take up to 5 hours to cook down, depending on how thick and roasted you like it. I stir it a couple of times to expose more vegetables to the roasting process. (Stand way back from the stove when you open that door, though—you will release a dangerous amount of steam. I mean it, stand back.)

I took a chance the first time out with this recipe because I prefer to cook with blunt force rather than fiddle around with things like food mills. Sounds like work to me. Plus, I like to use whole fruits when possible to reap their full nutritional benefits. So my Vitamix was pressed into duty here rather than a food mill. A Vitamix is a costly investment (you can buy one from their Web site for under $400, but just barely) yet worth every penny for me and probably for any other vegetarians who cook from scratch whenever possible. For instance, if you put ice in with your ingredients, the Vitamix makes ice cream within three minutes. Skip the ice, and it makes hot soup instead. It could liquefy nails, so the Vitamix made short work of the skins, seeds and cores in my sauce.

Using the skins and seeds rather than straining them out may change the taste, but I'll never know. Certainly, you get more of the charred, roasted flavor this way. And trust me, we eat "Tomato Terminator" right out of the blender.

Gardeners with patience and perceptive palates probably would enjoy starting out with the master recipe and then adjusting for individual preferences. My neighbor Sharlene, for instance, has asked for a batch without green peppers, which upset her stomach, and my boyfriend, Jack, wants one with extra habaneros. Jack lived in Thailand for many years and got used to its cuisine. "You hadn't had a real meal there unless you felt punched in the mouth," he says. (That's a tough man to cook for, believe you me.)

Consider it an adventure! You CANNOT screw this sauce up, so go wild. And making it is half the fun. I haul my veggies, a cutting board and the roasting pan out onto the deck during weekend get-togethers, then put my feet up in the sun, chop and talk. That's the best of all possible worlds for me: Cooking and chattering.

One caveat: Be mindful of those jalapeno and habanero juices, especially if you wear contacts. Be mindful today and STAY mindful tomorrow—your fingers will be radioactive for awhile unless you use gloves, and what's the fun in that? (Oh, what a feeling if you forget and innocently brush a drop of sweat away from your eyes.)

But oh what a feeling it is to know that no longer will even one ripe tomato go to waste. And, with the exception of the olive oil, everything in this sauce comes from my garden.

Next year, we'll have to plant more tomatoes.

An artist, writer and builder, Summer Walla is truly in her element only in the garden, where it all comes together. Her latest project is spray painting what little grass is left under the melon vines and sunflowers.