Polenta and Eggplant

The other day, we went up to Echo Hill to get some roasted corn meal.  We have eaten grits a couple of times lately and I have used the extra setup in a pan for slicing and frying at a later meal.  But the grits have a very bland flavor, more just a carrier for maple syrup than anything else.  I had a hankering for some fried corn meal mush with some backbone to it.  Got around to making it yesterday which means today we had roasted corn meal polenta in the 'fridge.  Just so happens, the baby eggplants (one of the few things the deer have left us in the garden this year) are coming in beautifully and I just made some fresh tomato sauce.  So, bread and bake baby eggplant slices the way Mom always used to, slice the roasted corn meal polenta, layer up polenta, baked eggplant, fresh tomato sauce, and mozzarella cheese, and bake in the oven at ~375 until everything is hot and cheese is melted.  Served with hot Italian sausage and sauce on a good Kaiser roll.  Yum.

Fresh Tomato Sauce

Every year at about this time I like to make fresh tomato sauce.  This is just tomato sauce made from fresh tomatoes and not cooked down so far that it loses its fresh taste.  I usually include onion, green pepper, garlic, fresh basil, bay leaf, etc., etc., etc.  You know the things that work.  Trouble is, it tends to be watery.  If you cook it down far enough to avoid "tomato chunks in very watery sauce" it soon takes on the regular cooked flavor.  This year, I tried something different.  After the tomato chunks had just cooked enough to soften, I separated most of the liquid from the solids using a colander.  I then cooked the liquid portion, reducing it by about 50% or slightly more.  Recombined the liquid and solids, added a can of tomato paste, and voila:  sauce that was not too watery but with the tomatoes not over cooked.

A couple of years ago I was at a training class about this time of year and sat next to a classmate of Italian extraction.  We were chatting and I described fresh tomato sauce to him.  He told me that the Italians have a name for this.  I have forgotten the name, but the concept is recognized as distinct from marinara, which is a cooked down tomato sauce, as I understand it.