I've made my first batch of tomato sauce from this season homegrown tomatoes. I use a recipe out of a very old cookbook full of recipes from women who lived up the Waitotara Valley, NZ. The cook book was produced for the Makakaho Junction (Marahema) Taumatatahi School 60th Jubilee in 1958. It has recipes on soap making, where the mixture is boiled in a "copper" over the fire, using mutton fat, handy hints, such as "when making an apple pie try adding an ounce of grated cheese to the cooked apples. An apple pie without cheese is like a kiss without a cuddle". There are even health hints - a cough cure, a "building up mixture' that contains black molasses and a cure for rheumatism.I love flicking through the two copies I have and seeing my Aunts and Grandmothers handwriting in them, commenting on or altering the ingredients in some of the recipes and also their names at the base of some of the recipes. There is also a section on the history of the settlers of the valley, including my paternal grandfathers family - they lived a really hard life, one we cannot begin to imagine.
The Tomato Sauce recipe I use is a combination of two or three from the book, refined over time and converted to grams and kilograms instead of ounces and pounds.
I don't skin the tomatoes, instead once cooked I whizz the mixture up with my whizz stick. I also use frozen tomatoes or fresh if I have enough fresh in one go. I also cut up onions and apples in my kitchen whiz - not worrying to much if they are still a bit chunky as the whizz at the end, puree's up everything.
Tomato Sauce3.6kg ripe tomatoes
1 kg Granny Smith (cooking) apples
6 lge onions
125 gm plain salt
1 kg brown sugar
1 litre malt vinegar
garlic (about 10 gloves)
In a muslin bag (I use a new chux cloth and tie it up)
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp whole allspice
28 gm whole cloves
Cut tomatoes, onions and apples. Put all ingredients in a large stock pot. Bring to boil and simmer for somewhere between 2 - 3 hours, stirring occasionally to make sure it is not sticking to the bottom of the pot. Whizz and bottle - cork when cold.
Depending on the type of tomatoes used, the colour varies - this time I have a mixture of Apollo, Black Russian, Rouge de Marmade and Mortgage Lifter - the Black Russian have given the sauce a deep red colour. Previously I have used a mix of red, black, orange and yellow tomatoes.
That looks like a great sauce. I really need to make some tomato sauce but we only have cherry tomatoes growing as the fruit fly gets into the bigger ones unfortunately. .
ReplyDeleteI had to cover all my beefsteak type tomatoes Nanna Chel. Not only against fruit fly, but also a night flying moth that lays eggs on them and then a nasty caterpillar eats its way into the tomato. I used fruit fly bags on some of the trusses and covered one whole garden with a big net. That way, I actually managed to get fruit without damage on them. Cheers Lyndie
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