{"id":6267,"date":"2014-09-14T22:10:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T03:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/?p=6267"},"modified":"2014-09-14T22:10:03","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T03:10:03","slug":"making-tomato-sauce-while-the-sun-shines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/2014\/09\/making-tomato-sauce-while-the-sun-shines\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Tomato Sauce While the Sun Shines"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DSC_1006\"<\/a>Until I moved to West Tisbury, the agricultural center of Martha\u2019s Vineyard (that translates to small, rural town with many farms), I didn\u2019t fully understand the origin of the expression \u201cMaking hay while the sun shines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that I am surrounded by hay fields, I\u2019ve learned to note the passing of warm weather months according to whether it\u2019s the first, second or sometimes even the third haying. The grass grows tall and down it goes. Cut, dried, rowed, and baled. It grows again and so on.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve also come to understand that rain and wet weather can ruin hay, so farmers look for a spell of sunny, dry weather to do the haying. Basically, they\u2019re taking advantage of a window of opportunity.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_1651\"<\/a>It seems like there\u2019s a lot of that proverbial \u201cmaking hay while the sun shines\u201d on a farm. For me this year it has been all about trying to do something with extra vegetables before they cross the line into compost. The race against time is especially frustrating because there is so very little spare time to begin with on a farm! (Well, especially a growing farm with only two people working on it.) The hours in between the morning and evening chores are when Roy and I try to get our other work done, while keeping an eye on the farm stand, too. (September is quieter, yes, but we\u2019ve already sold out of eggs (30 dozen) today, so it isn\u2019t that quiet!)<\/p>\n

\"DSC_1660\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DSC_1364\"<\/a>Fortunately I got a magazine assignment to write about pickling, so I\u2019ve been able to justify spending some of those in-between hours making pickles. The top shelf of the mud-room fridge is now Ball-jar central. And I did make blackberry jam.<\/p>\n

But my hopes that this would finally be the year I\u2019d be canning lots of tomatoes and tomato sauce were a bit unrealistic. (Though we do have a stack of quart Ball jars we keep hopefully tripping over, thinking they may still get used.) For one thing, I didn\u2019t realize that the San Marzano tomato plants were indeterminate\u2014meaning that they yield continuously. I thought they were determinate, and I imagined that at some point they would offer up a big batch of ripe plum tomatoes, and we would then stop everything and spend an afternoon canning. Ha! Turns out they\u2019ve been continuously ripening since mid-August, so they must get dealt with periodically (and a few dozen or so at a time).<\/p>\n

Secondly, after a great early yield, our beefsteak and plum tomatoes all began to suffer from disease brought on by stress. (It took us a while to figure out that a pressure valve in our irrigation system was malfunctioning.) As a result, most of the tomatoes (including the San Marzanos) have been developing small rot spots as they get close to ripening. Since we can\u2019t sell damaged tomatoes, I\u2019ve had to think of something to do with them once or twice a week, since many are perfectly fine for the most part.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"DSC_8189\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DSC_1757\"<\/a>For any beefsteaks that aren\u2019t too far gone, I\u2019ve relied on my favorite technique. (Roasting, of course, but slow-roasting for these big guys.) Layered into containers, they freeze well for adding a great depth of flavor to just about anything in the winter months.<\/p>\n

But for the San Marzanos, which still seem to be producing like crazy, I\u2019ve been making small batches (a few quarts) of sauce for the freezer, which isn\u2019t such a bad thing. (The freezer\u2019s looking pretty promising, and I\u2019m much happier with loads of tomato sauce rather than loads of pork like last year!)<\/p>\n

\"DSC_1647\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Making sauce so frequently has also let me perfect a tasty recipe that is easy to get started quickly so that I can do other things while it simmers away on the stove.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_1002\"<\/a>Here\u2019s what I do: I chunk up a couple of our onions and several of our damaged carrots (which I have a lot of, too) and whiz them in the food processor. (I learned in my first restaurant cooking job how wonderful a generous amount of carrots can be in tomato recipes.) I melt butter (inspired by a Marcella Hazan recipe, I\u2019ve switched from olive oil to butter in my sauce) in a big pot and sweat the veggies (salted of course) until they are soft. Meanwhile I mince several cloves of garlic and add that to the softened veggies. I sometimes add a splash of balsamic vinegar or a few red pepper flakes at this point.<\/p>\n

Then I usually wind up taking the pot off the stove for a few minutes while I finish cutting up the tomatoes. But I don\u2019t fuss over the tomatoes. In fact, I don\u2019t peel or seed them\u2014I just cut out any spots and roughly chop everything else. I add a bit more butter to the pot, add all of the tomatoes and bring to a simmer. (Usually the pot is full almost all the way up to the top.) I let the sauce bubble very gently on low heat and reduce by about half (until I like the consistency), usually between 2 and 3 hours. I stir when I walk by, of course.<\/p>\n

\"photo-106\"<\/a>After I take the stove off the pot, I let it cool a bit and then use my immersion blender to roughly puree it so that the remaining bits of skin won\u2019t be bothersome to anyone. Then I portion into different sized containers, let cool some more, and refrigerate or freeze. Not rocket science, I know, but it is satisfying. And at least I don\u2019t have to wring my hands over dumping beautiful tomatoes in the compost pile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until I moved to West Tisbury, the agricultural center of Martha\u2019s Vineyard (that translates to small, rural town with many farms), I didn\u2019t fully understand the origin of the expression \u201cMaking hay while the sun shines.\u201d Now that I am surrounded by hay fields, I\u2019ve learned to note the passing of warm weather months according […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[115,1],"tags":[153,69],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6279,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267\/revisions\/6279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}