Tuscan tomato sauce – Saucy days recipe #1

Growing and picking tomatoes is the easy part.  The hard part is deciding how best to use your precious homegrown produce.  I’ve been thinking a lot about making pasta sauce to can for the winter, but before commiting to one recipe and going to the trouble of canning, I wanted to make sure I had the best recipe possible.  For the first batch, I turned to my Small Batch Preserving cookbook and selected their Tuscan tomato sauce – I went off recipe since I would be eating this fresh and not processing it to store.

If you’re canning sauce, you need to stick with a tested recipe… otherwise you could get sick.  Really sick.  Botulism sick.  Or you can toss your sauce in the freezer and avoid canning altogether.

Going off-recipe meant adding a few extra veggies into the sauce.  I grated a couple of homegrown carrots and beets.  The beets added lots of colour to both the sauce… and my hands.

Beet juice drama scene. Like most old school recipes, most of the work is up front: chopping, peeling, dicing.  I started out with a couple of onions and garlic and sweated them out in some olive oil.  Then added my tomatoes.

I roughly chopped the tomatoes and discarded a bit of the seeds and innards that fell onto to the cutting board, but didn’t concern myself with totally deseeding them or getting the skin off.  I think this may have been a critical mistake as the seeds can impart too much bitterness into your sauce.  It’s my first batch, there are bound to be mistakes.

It seems (according to my Google research after-the-fact) folks usually blanch their tomatoes first, peel the skin off and then scoop out the seeds.  Oops.

I added some dry red wine to the mix – in this case a pretty cheapo Jackson-Triggs merlot.  Merlot.  It begs to be italicized.

Here’s a look at the sauce with the beets, wine and balsamic added.  It’s pretty dark.  I sort of regret using our better balsamic for the recipe.  I think it overwhelmed the recipe and that the Small-Batch writers were probably using your grocery store “balsamic”.

Once it had all cooked, I really regretted not skinning the tomatoes.  The texture was terrible.  I decided to pull out my food mill to remove the skins.  It tasted better, less bitter.

At the same time I was tippy tapping this post, an email came into my inbox from the people at Winefox (a site that takes wine from “snobby to hobby” and features a monocle wearing fox mascot) wanting to know if I wanted to get some wine tips to write about on the old blog.  Good timing.  I definitely didn’t want a repeat of Merlot-gate for my next sauce.  So I sent along some questions about choosing a better bottle for the next batch.  Here we go…

1) Do you have some recommendation for a not-too-expensive red wine for my next batch of sauce?  (Preferably something Canadian)
Winefox wine expert (and Real Food for Real Kids “founding Dad”), David Farnell recommends a Gamay. “Just pick a producer!”

• Henry of Pelham Gamay, $14.95
• Malivoire Gamay, $16.95

2) Do you think people should cook with as good of wines as they drink?
“When recipes call for just a splash of wine, feel free to use the good stuff from your glass – it really will produce a better result.  If you need to use more than a cup, choose a less-expensive option from your pantry, but one that you’d still drink yourself.   Keep in mind, you’re using the wine to add flavour, so you want to make sure you enjoy it for what it is, but it’s not necessary to splurge on a top-notch bottle either. Here’s a good rule: If you can pour yourself a glass and enjoy it while you’re cooking with it, you’re all set. And, maybe, have an even better one on-hand to enjoy with your guests once dinner’s served!”

My last question was answered by Winefox’s brand manager, Lindsay Gavey…

3) How do you know if a Canadian wine has been mixed with other countries’ grapes?
In most cases, origins will be provided on the back of the bottle. With VQA wines, authenticity is clear and guaranteed, as there are very specific rules in the VQA that govern foreign content – and labeling. Some will even specify a more specific region (or appellation), such as Prince Edward County. This means that the grapes used were exclusively grown in Ontario, with at least 85% grown in the stated appellation. If a bottle has the VQA logo, then you know that the wine was made from 100% Ontario grown grapes.

Thanks for the tips Winefox! I’ll be sure to check for a Gamay next time I’m shopping.

Need to know more about Winefox?

“The goal of Winefox.ca is to be Canada’s go-to destination for anyone interested in wine, whether they want to share, learn and discuss wine, build their personal wine profiles and online cellars, or simply find a wine to take to their next dinner party,” says Dean Ostilly, General Manager of Winefox.