Category — Sauce

I took the best parts from Marisa’s (Food in Jars) and Bon appétit’s recipes for tomato jam and made the most deeeeeeelicious spread imaginable. Thank you both for the recipes.

I had seen recipes for tomato jam before, but it wasn’t until we had tomato jam with our appetizers at DiVino the other week that I realized exactly what we were missing.  And with several pounds of garden tomatoes ripening in our basement, I suddenly knew just what to do with them.

Out came the canning supplies: mini jars, stock pot, funnel and tongs.  Ready to go.

The greatest thing about the Food in Jars method is that it’s SO easy.  All you have to do is chop the tomatoes and toss the ingredients in a pot to cook away.  No blanching the tomatoes or removing seeds, everything goes in the pot.

I served my jam with bread and goat’s cheese and I’m not sure there is any better possible pairing.

Aren’t these little 1/2 cup size jars cute?  And my favourite part of the process?  Making the stickers for the lids.

It’s cranberry season in Ottawa (finally!).  I’ve had the recipe for cranberry maple butter bookmarked all summer and have waited patiently for cranberries to appear at the market.  I picked up these Upper Canada Cranberries a week ago – they’re pretty perfect looking.

I followed the recipe from the Small Batch Preserving cookbook and ended up with almost two full cups of delicious cranberry butter.

The boy and I sampled it on top of our “cheesy mouse biscuits”  (homemade herb crackers that actually have no rodent or cheese components).  If you want to know the story of the ‘salty cheesy mouse biscuits’ you just need to pick up a copy of the book Cherry the Pig.  In the story, Cherry bakes a lovely apple cake, but the mice who nibble at it think it’s awful.  Cherry’s feelings are hurt until she figures out that mice like salty cheesy biscuits.  Suffice to say, we’ve been reading this book a lot.  And I get a lot of requests for “cheesy mouse biscuits!!”.

Using this easy (and vegan!) recipe from the Straight from the Farm blog, I whipped up another batch this week for work.  I happened to be making pasta on the same night, so I thought it might save time to roll the cracker dough out in the pasta maker.  It worked like a charm!  I fed the dough through the rollers to the 3-4 setting and then cut out squares using a rotary ravioli cutter.

Homemade crackers are pretty unusual – despite the fact that they are a snap to make.  The novelty factor will impress everyone from toddlers through senior executives.

Exhibit A.  I’m really proud that he tried the cranberry maple butter (and liked it!) – he’s usually a bit of a jamophobe.

One problem.  Canning seems to require a lot of dishes.  And dishwashing.  Ugh.  What a mess!

A fellow mom and I decided to set aside our holiday Monday to do some tomato canning. The husbands were briefed as to the plan and coordinated the management of children outside the house.

I booked the Vrtucar and did a run to the grocery store and farmers market early on Sunday morning to pick up our supplies: jars, tomatoes, tomatoes and more tomatoes – about 40 pounds in total. I bought beefsteaks from the grocery store and Romas from the farmers market. The grocery store tomatoes, sold in 3L baskets, weren’t a great deal, but at least they were from Ontario.

Next year, I’ll do a little more legwork to find someone who sells by the bushel – I would hope that buying in bulk would make the process slightly more economical. Because, despite what my hairdresser thought when I told about my tomato canning plan at my last appointment, it’s really not a money saving activity. At least not the first year when you need to buy your jars. Or factor in your time. And your spouse’s patience.

On Sunday night I mentally prepared: counting stockpots, collecting ingredients, dusting off my canning tools and rereading the instructions in my Bernardin canning book to determine the most efficient way to can the tomatoes in our limited amount of child-free time. I watched and re-watched the tutorial by the guys behind the Bitten Word. (Next year, I will heed their advice and bring beer.)
On Monday morning, with the children out of the house and off to the dinosaur museum, we quickly got the first batch of tomatoes washed, blanched and peeled. It took a bit of pot jockeying to figure out how to manage it all. The canner, the blanching pot, the lids, the ice bath… it was a squeeze.

Initially, we thought we could use the BBQ to avoid turning the kitchen into a steam bath, but the pots just didn’t fit. We would have to work with only the four burners on the stovetop.

Once the first jars (8 x 500mL ) were in the canner, we realized that the final water bath processing step was the Achilles heel of the production line. With only one canner, we had a bit of down time between each batch.  Not good.

With a bit more pot jockeying, we set up two more burners to sterilize jars while the canner was occupied and we got started on the next round. To be more efficient in this round, we opted for the bigger 1L size jars.

Lesson learned: If you only have one canner, use the biggest jars that you can fit in it. (Duh, right?)

The children arrived back at the house while round #2 was in the canner. We decided to pause for lunch and finish the job once everyone was tucked in for naps. Use your own judgment, but a third round of canning may be the straw that breaks the marital camel’s back.  Nevertheless.

When the third batch was in the canner, we made a quick sauce with the remainder of tomatoes. (Note: If you do this step, provide camel/spouse with back pain medication and/or beer to soften the news that after four hours, you just aren’t *quite* done.)

The final tally from our tomato canning day was:

• 12 x 1L
• 8 x 500mL
• 2.5 x 500mL sauce

Split between two families, we’d certainly have to can much more to have enough to last the winter. Spouses – this is your official warning for next year.

I’ve got tomatoes piling up chez nous.  I’ve even borrowed the boy’s colander to temporarily store them.  (He didn’t seem to mind.)  I completed a third batch of tomato sauce, throwing recipes and measuring out the window.  What a nice way to cook.

I followed the same process as my previous roasted tomato sauce, but omitted the carrots.  I simply filled the baking tray with tomatoes until it was full – tucking in some onion and garlic into the nooks.  And then I sat down and relaxed while they roasted away.  Once the tomatoes were removed from the oven, I blended them and a big bunch of basil in the blender.  Voila.  Another pasta sauce ready for the week.

It was delicious served on our homemade gnocchi.  See the tomatoes in the background of this photo?  They got turned into sundried tomatoes later in the day.  And I got to tick one more item off my 2011 resolution list: make sundried tomatoes from homegrown tomatoes.

I wasn’t wowed by my last “Tuscan” pasta sauce.  It was too tart, too bold, too… just not right.  I guess I was looking for a lighter and more summery tasting sauce.

For second batch of tomato sauce, I decided on a roasted tomato version.  I chose this one because roasting makes things taste great and there’s no fussing with removing the tomato skins.  Less fuss is a good thing. (Wink Martha!)

I picked about 3.5 pounds of my plum tomatoes, cut them in half and scooped the seeds into a bowl.  I set them on a foil-lined baking sheet along with some garlic and coated liberally in olive oil.  Perfect.  Into the oven it went.

I reserved the tomato pulp that I scooped out and strained out the seeds.  I got quite a bit of nice tomato juice and planned on adding it to a future veggie stock.

And then I started reading some more recipes.  Some people were  adding onions and carrots!  Good idea.  I ran to the garden and grabbed the extra ingredients and tossed them onto the baking sheet too.

Back to the computer.  Other recipes called for herbs.  Herbs!  Of course, the darn sauce should have herbs.  Back to the garden.  I got a little overzealous with the thyme picking.  (Looks like I’ll be drying some thyme.)  In went the rosemary and thyme.

After an hour, everything was nice and roasted.  Once the roasted veggies had cooled, they all went into the blender with some salt, pepper, olive oil and sugar.

It was a good thing that I reserved the tomato juice because I ended up needing all of it to blend the tomatoes. (If you’re using tomatoes with a thicker “wall”, you may not need to add any tomato juice.)

Thick and rich. I think roasting is definitely the way to go.

Pros:

• No peeling tomatoes!
• Great flavour
• No stirring!
• No boiling and adding humidity to your house

Cons:

• Need to keep a hot oven running for an hour
• Need to clean a baking sheet (Maybe it’s just me and my tiny sink -  I hate cleaning baking sheets.)
• Need a blender or hand blender to pulverize into sauce.

Next batch: roasted tomato and basil.  Stay tuned!

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.