Showing posts with label simple sauces. Show all posts
Showing posts with label simple sauces. Show all posts
I really love tomatoes as I think I have told you in the past. They are quite simply one of my favourite things. For months and months now I have seen other food bloggers being gifted with boxes of beautiful boxes of rich and delicious looking tomatoes from The Tomato Stall, on the Isle of Wight. . Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. lask week I decided that Todd and I deserved a bit of a splurge after being stuck in our home on lockdown for the past 10 weeks. I bit the bullet and ordered us a mixed family box.
I think it is just amazing that we live in a day and an age where something like this, grown and harvested on the Isle of Wight, can be picked on one day and then be sitting on my dining room table the next. They are absolutely beautiful, and arrived undamaged except for one which was slightly squashed. I ate that right away like an apple, lightly sprinkled with sea salt. Oh boy was it ever good!! I was not sorry I had ordered them. Not one bit.
We have both been enjoying them very much in the ensuing days. Yesterday I decided to make an Oven Roasted Tomato sauce with some of them. I am not sure what each variety of tomato is, but I think I picked the right ones for roasting and saucing anyways . . .
I used two different kinds. I think the longer one is one that would be used for cooking with. It was nice and fleshy. Not sure about the smaller ones, but they worked well in any case.
If you have never made an oven roasted tomato sauce before now, you really need to try it! This recipe is so simple and always turns out so delicious! Its a great recipe to use when you have a glut of tomatoes in the garden or when you have some anoemic tomatoes from the shops that you want to make taste better. Roasting tomatoes is always a real flavour enhancer!
Cut in half, roast in a special mixture, peel, blitz and serve. Simple.
There is nothing extraordinarily unusual in the roasting mixture. A good olive oil and some garlic . . .
Some dried basil and oregano . . .
You cut your tomatoes in half and lay them cut side down in the mixture and then roast them in a hot oven . . .
About 35 to 40 minutes in a hot oven until they are all rich and caramelised and have released their juices . . . mingling with the olive oil, garlic and herbs in the roasting tray . . .
You don't need to peel them afterwards. I always do because I don't like the feel of cooked tomato skins in my mouth.
The roasted flesh slips very easily out of the skins in any case. I just held them one at a time over the bowl of the food processor and they fell right in.
I don't bother to remove the seeds. I don't mind them. You can if you want to. I actually don't have a full size food processor anymore. It is on my wish list to get one. The lid jammed shut on mine and I cannot get it off for love nor money. I use my Cookhouse mini chopper. Its a great little tool. I bet I use it just about every second day or so!
Anyways, just blitz the sauce until smooth and you are good to go. You can leave it a bit chunky if you like it that way. I do sometimes, and other times I like it smooth.
It is perfectly flavoured, with just the right amount of garlic and herbs . . . in short perfect. Just like the tomatoes I used to make it.
Today I served it on some radiatore so that there were plenty of little pocket to hug onto that lush sauce. Seriously tasty with some grated Parmesan on top.
Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce
Yield: 4
This is the best tomato sauce. Fresh tomatoes when roasted have the most beautiful rich flavour. Simple and delicious.
Ingredients:
- 2 pounds fresh tomatoes
- 3 or 4 fat cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
- 1 tsp dried basil leaves
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano leaves
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 2 TBS really good quality extra virgin olive oil
Instructions:
- Pre-heat your oven to 200*C/400*F/ gas mark 6. Wipe your tomatoes off with a damp cloth, cut them into halves and set aside.
- Pour the olive oil into the bottom of a large shallow baking tray with one inch sides. Scatter in the minced garlic, basil leaves, oregano leaves, salt and pepper. Mix well. Add the tomatoes, cut side down, fitting them all into the sheet and spreading the olive oil mixture around beneath them. Roast for 30 to 40 minutes until soft, the skins are starting to peel off, and some of them are beginning to colour.
- Remove from the oven and let cool somewhat. Lift off all the peels and discard. You can then put them through a mouli to remove the seeds and puree them, but I prefer to just mash it all together with a fork. I like the extra texture and flavour of the seeds.
- Serve hot with your favourite pasta, or let cool and freeze in containers.
I could seriously eat pasta until it comes out my ears. Todd not so much. I don't mind. More for me!
I found myself with rather a large bowl of apples that I wanted to use. There was a mix of varieties. Todd probably would have wanted me to make a crumble or a pie, but I found myself wanting to make applesauce.
I had some porkchops I had thawed out and applesauce is something we love to have with pork. We also love to eat applesauce in a bowl, just as a dessert.
My mother used to cook herself up a large saucepan of applesauce every now and then and she would enjoy it for days. Having spent a great deal of my growing up years in a prime apple growing area of Canada, I come by my love of apples quite naturally!
I wanted to try something a little bit different this time however.
I just didn't want to simmer apples . . . I decided to roast them in the oven and created an oven roasted applesauce, which if I may brag for a few minutes turned out to be stupendous!
I had a mix of apples . . . some were sweet eating apples and some were Granny Smiths. I peeled them all and sliced them.
I tossed them in a bowl together with a pinch of salt, some sugar and ground cinnamon, also adding a touch of freshly grated nutmeg.
Nutmeg adds such a lovely flavour to apples. You can leave the salt out, but just a pinch does make a difference.
I dotted them with butter and then roasted them in a buttered baking dish, tightly covered.
It took about 45 minutes. I mashed them with a fork because I like my applesauce to have a bit of texture.
For my chops, I brined them first and then seasoned them, clipped the fatty edge and browned them in my cast iron skillet on both sides, ready to pop into the oven alongside of the apples.
They were quite thick (about 1 1/2 inches) and they were cooked beautifully in the same amount of time it took to cook the apples.
I am not sure why pork and apples go so well together.
Interestingly enough good pork producers will fatten their pigs up on apples prior to slaughtering them. They say it makes the meat sweeter.
Another interesting fact is that the seasons of pork and apples coincide with each other, so . . . that could be a part of why we think they go so well together.
To brine my chops, I soak them for about an hour in a mix of cold water with several TBS each of fine sea salt and sugar.
Rinse well, pat dry. Season (light on the salt) and then cook as per your requirement.
Brined chops are NEVER dry. Trust me on this. It's a simple thing and makes a huge difference.
Oven Roasted Applesauce
Yield: Makes about
2 cups
Ingredients:
- 2 1/2 pounds apples, peeled and sliced (I used a mix of tart and sweet)
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- 50g caster sugar (1/4 cup)
- pinch of salt
- butter to dot on top, about 2 TBS (optional)
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4. Butter a deep baking dish large enough to hold the apples.
- Toss the sliced apples together in a bowl with the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and a pinch of salt. Pour them into the prepared baking dish and dot with butter if using. Cover tightly with foil.
- Roast in the preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes, stirring them halfway through the cook time, until they are soft and just beginning to caramelise. Remove from the oven and mash well with a fork. Taste and adjust sweetness with some extra sugar if need be. We prefer ours a bit on the tart side, and of course a lot depends on the sweetness of the apples you use.
- Spoon into a serving bowl and serve warm with pork, or with a scoop of vanilla ice cream if you are enjoying this as a dessert!
notes:
If you are planning on refrigerating this don't add the butter.
In any case if you are wanting to make your own applesauce, why not try roasting it the next time? It was really delicious. I think I may have spoilt myself for any other kind.
I think perhaps the longer you roast it the more condensed it might become, and you just may end up with apple butter, but I could be wrong. That's an experiment for another day!
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