You like-a-the-sauce?: A Tomato-based saga

As Pheidippides ran from the great battle of Marathon to Athens, so runs the story of the Sauce. Ok, maybe that is a bit of an overstatement, but let me tell you who haven’t done it: making spaghetti sauce out of tomatoes can take a very long time.

There are a few preparatory steps that will not be included in this timeline, like digging the onions out of the ground, and going to the farmers market for a peck of tomatoes. Though those things DID happen, and have a place in the time-space continuum, but even so, it took the better part of two days to get the sauce I wanted from a sack of tomatoes.

One of the great things about spaghetti sauce is that it’s so easily customized, depending on what you and your family like, what ingredients you have available, and how much time you have to put into it.

Since I had access to tons of sweet fresh tomatoes, in several varieties, plus a great selections of peppers and onions and herbs, I opted for a long-simmered sauce, looking for a rich, complex flavor, nice thick consistency and big juicy chunks of veggies. I wanted a big batch so I could freeze some, and enjoy it later in the season.

I bought a peck of fresh tomatoes at the farmers market, and added a handful 6 or 7 Romas from my own garden. I would have done all Roma tomatoes because of their sweet, mellow flavor, but they are much smaller and harder to peel and seed than the bigger varieties, making it even more of a pain in the butt. Cleaning the fruit is really the only labor-intensive part of the whole process. The tomatoes must be skinned, and the only good way to do that is by dropping them in boiling water for about a minute, till the skins burst, then plunge them into ice water. This makes the skins slide right off once they are cool enough to handle, and also makes the tomatoes very slippery and easy to drop on the floor where they may well explode all over your feet and legs. You know, if that were to happen. Once the tomatoes lose their shirts, they must be cored, cut in half or quarters, and all the seeds and juice and guts squeezed out. This is tricky and messy. You should do it over a very big bowl so as to save the juice for later. The cleaned tomato corpses then go into the food processor and mashed up all nice and chunky and saucy. Strain the juice and save to add later. If you’re really plucky, save the seeds to plant next season.

Next comes my favorite part, preparing all of the OTHER stuff that goes in. Peppers, carrots, onions, spices and herbs, YUM!

The wonderful flavors in this recipe are unlocked by sautéing the ingredients before putting it all together to simmer. Do this in your stock-pot so none of the good stuff is lost. Start with the usual suspects, oil, garlic, onions… then add in the interesting stuff, multiple varieties of bell pepper, orange, red, yellow, chop some carrots and celery. I was lucky enough to have plenty of fresh basil and oregano on hand from the herb patch. Pick or buy your own, chop them up just a little, and toss them in. If you’re feeling kinky, add a little ground mustard seed. I had to resort to a dried bay leaf (gasp!) but as usual, the fresher the better for all ingredients.

I’m not entirely certain why, but one of the recipes I consulted tells me to add some chopped (non-mushed peeled and seeded per the earlier process) tomatoes at this point, so I hacked up a few more sweet Romas and tossed them in as well. A little splash of wine, let it all stew for a few minutes, then pile in all of the processed tomatoes and simmer it forrr-ev-errrrr. I added the juice from processing the tomatoes, this might have made it unnecessarily wet, but whatever. Some recipes say simmer 2 hours, but at that point, my sauce smelled wonderful, but looked watery and just not quite done. 2 more hours—better, but still not right. I really wanted that thick awesome chunkiness, but I just wasn’t getting it. I could have just added some tomato paste or flour or something, but I felt like that was cheating the whole concept. I ended up running out of Tuesday for this project, took it off the stove, let it sit for a bit, then stuck the whole works in the fridge and picked up simmering the next day. All in all it simmered a bit over 6 hours, then sat and congealed a couple more, but I got my sauce. And it was worth it. Sweet, tangy, chunky and satisfying. I was very pleased.

My original intention was to make a big batch, eat a meal out of it and freeze the rest, but the sauce turned out so well that we ended up eating more than half of it the first couple days with only 3 portions going in the freezer. Oh well, I’ll just go whip up some more!

Papa’s Slow Burn Spaghetti Sauce

10-14 ripe tomatoes, depending on size

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons butter

3 small onions, or one huge grocery store one, chopped

1 red, 1 orange, 1 yellow bell pepper, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

4-5 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

1/4 chopped fresh oregano

1 tablespoon ground mustard seed

1 tablespoon salt

1/4 cup Burgundy wine, or a nice deep red of your choice

1 bay leaf

2 stalks celery, chopped

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Have ready a large bowl of iced water. Plunge whole tomatoes in boiling water until skin starts to peel, aboute 1 minute. Remove with slotted spoon and place in ice bath. Let rest until cool enough to handle, then remove peel, cut in half and squeeze out seeds. Chop the squeezed tomatoes and puree in blender or food processor. Chop one or two more tomatoes and set aside.

In your stock-pot, over medium heat, sauté onion, bell pepper, carrot and garlic in oil and butter until onion starts to soften, usually about 5 minutes. Stir in chopped tomato, basil, oregano, salt and wine. Place bay leaf and celery stalks in pot. Dump in the pureed tomato. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover and simmer AT LEAST 2 hours. After that point, check on it occasionally, sniff, stir, taste, until it’s just the way you like it. Good luck not eating all of it at once, over your favorite pasta.