Sunday, September 3, 2017

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.

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