Summer in Amsterdam lasted about 2 days. Strike that, we had 2 summers this year, both lasting about 1 day. It caused the sad demise of my tomatoes, which I told you about before.
I was able to rescue a small bowl full of half ripe tomatoes and put them in the window sill. Helping them ripen by gaining every tiny little ray of sunlight available. Once they were ripe, I ceased the moment to make my roasted tomato sauce.
Tomatoes and other veggies before they became sauce.
I usually try to make a batch large enough to last me through winter. This time the sauce won’t go that far, but at least it’ll last me a little while. Since I hardly ever use it as is, I can stretch it quite far. The fact that it’s so concentrated, and roasted, makes it versatile and easy and healthy enough for a quick weeknight meal, but flavorful and special enough to also use in a special dinner. I’ve been known to add broth to it and make a very tasty tomato soup. My 4 year old cousin who despises vegetables or healthy food in general was happy to eat many bites of pasta with this sauce because it really is that good (and to the unsuspected viewer doesn’t look like it’s almost 100 percent vegetable!)
I loved making this sauce with veggies from my garden. Despite the fact that it isn’t much, I know I’ve put them to good use. And every time this fall and winter, when I eat sauce, I will remember the fact that I actually grew food myself. That really is something too, at least for a city girl like me.
Vegetables in the casserole dish, ready to be roasted.
Needless to say, I love making this sauce. I freeze it into ice cubes -sauce cubes – and add it to whatever sauce or dish I’m making which can benefit from the taste of home-made roasted tomato sauce.
I’ve made many variations of this sauce over time. Sometimes I add carrots, Sometimes regular onions. The only constant really are the tomatoes. The other constant is that it’ll be the best sauce you’ve ever tasted!
Vegetables in casserole dish, after about 45 minutes of roasting.
| Roasted tomato sauce |
Author:
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 1 hour 50 mins
Total time: 2 hours
Ingredients
- 12-15 tomatoes, nice and ripe
- 1 orange bell pepper
- 2 chili peppers
- 1 head of garlic
- 5 or 6 scallions
- olive oil
- salt
- fresh herbs
Instructions
- Cut all the vegetables into large chunks and place them in a casserole dish. Drizzle with olive oil, add a little salt and place in a hot oven (350F/175C), stir/turn vegetables over after about 45 minutes. Once the vegetables are all nice and very soft add the fresh herbs and place back in the oven for about 30 minutes.
- Once the vegetables are done, process them through a food mill into a fairly thick sauce.
- Let the sauce cool down and divide it into ice cube trays or small freezer safe bowls and freeze the sauce for later use.
- Use the sauce as is or add it to some ground beef or to some plain strained tomatoes for a variation in sauce.
Notes
Don’t worry if the vegetables get fairly dark, that’s all extra taste! Make sure they don’t fully burn though, if it goes too fast, lower the heat of your oven.
If you use a KitchenAid food mill (attached to a stand mixer) take the scraps through the mill at least once again or until the scraps are completely dry, the sauce will be even more concentrated and have more flavor!
Below are pictures of the process from removing the vegetables from the oven to the final product, sauce in cubes and dry scraps of seeds and skins to be discarded.
Roasted vegetables done and ready to be processed into sauce.
The roasted vegetables going through the food mill to become sauce.
Roasted tomato sauce put in a cutesy ice cube tray to be frozen for later use.
After putting the roasted vegetables through the KitchenAid food mill and re-processing the discarded scraps, this little dry heap of skins and seeds is what's left to toss.
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3 Responses to Roasted tomato sauce
Leave a Reply to Valerie Cancel reply
Networks
Looks so good! Can’t wait to try it.
Now if only I had a Kitchenaid….. No Kitchenaid or food mill here, I’m afraid…. The sauce does sound delicious though :)
Those old-fashioned hand cranked food mills work pretty good too (just require some muscles ;) ) and those should be available at hema or blokker for 10 euro or so (I think). It might be worth the small investment for these kinds of sauces :-)