ciao samin

today we made tons of tomato sauce, so i decided to can most of it for the winter.

we save all of our tomato scraps and ends, and all of the overripe tomatoes for sauce. i also buy lots of #2 tomatoes from farms like happy boy and dirty girl just for sauce (the dirty girl tomatoes are so beautiful and tasty right now! go out and buy some!).

we cut the tomatoes in half and roast them in the oven at about 300 degrees F for several hours, stirring them occasionally, until most of the juice has evaporated. this intensifies the flavor, and yields a less watery sauce.

then we cook a bunch of red onions (and i mean A LOT) in olive oil, letting them brown. we add garlic, every basil stem in the restaurant, a ton of olive oil, salt, and of course the roasted tomatoes. we let it all simmer for a few hours until the sauce is sweetsweetsweet. right at the end, we throw in a whole bunch of fresh basil, and then pass the sauce through the food mill.

then, i stuff sterile jars full of basil and pour the hot sauce over it. i process the jars for about 30 minutes, and let them cool at room temperature. it's a lot of work (each batch takes us two days), but the sauce is so sweet and delicious, and this way we can taste a bit of summer in the middle of the coldrainygray winter. it's totally worth it!