Roasted tomato sauce
By Tali Simon | July 23, 2012
I know I just made a big stink about not turning on the oven during the summer. Am I allowed to come back a day later with a recipe that requires not only turning on the oven, but turning it to a high temperature for roasting?
I make the rules, so I say…yes! Yes, I can.
The next time you go food shopping, check the price on tomatoes. And when they go on sale, buy a million, wait a few days, and then turn them into sauce. You can freeze this stuff by the cup (or two) and have a nice lil’ sauce stockpile.
Start with a baking dish full of halved tomatoes brushed with olive oil. Get some minced garlic and seasonings in there, too.
(You can use a larger dish, of course. I was working with a small pile of tomatoes.)
Once they’re done roasting, they should look like this:
It’s 1-2-3 from here. Let them cool to the touch, pinch off the skins, and blend the flesh in a food processor with a couple pinches of oregano.
That’s really all there is to it. Roasting brings out such great flavor in the tomatoes that too many other ingredients would be superfluous.
I know I don’t have to tell you what to do with your fresh tomato sauce. But come back tomorrow anyway to see what I’m doing with mine. There will be crust. There will be sauce. There will be cheese.
And it is not to be missed.
Ingredients Directions 1. Preheat oven to 400 F/200 C. 2. Core tomatoes, then halve them. (Alternatively, you could halve them and then cut away the top white part that was attached to the stem.) 3. Lightly grease a glass baking dish (use a dish with raised sides, not a tray — you want to catch the juices) and fill with tomato halves. Use a pastry brush to brush the outsides of the tomatoes with a light coat of olive oil. Sprinkle with minced garlic, salt, and pepper. 4. Roast for 35 minutes, or until tomato skins collapse and look like the photo in the post above. Set aside until cool to the touch. 5. Lift skins away from flesh and discard. They should come off effortlessly. Transfer skinned tomatoes to a food processor fitted with the knife blade, adding 1-2 Tbsp of the liquid that gathered in the dish during roasting. 6. Add oregano and blend until you reach the desired consistency. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed. Store for 1 week in the fridge or 10-12 weeks in the freezer.
Yield: 8×8 dish yields 1 cup of sauce; 9×13 dish yields 3 cups
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