It's the end of August- the time when my Roma tomatoes are ripened on the vine, ready to pick and make a fresh marinara sauce. This is so much better than the jars of sauce you buy in the supermarket! I love making marinara- getting my hands on the blanched, peeled tomatoes, and squishing them to make the sauce! It's my equivalent of stomping on grapes during wine making! I feel like I am in Italy! My sauce recipe has no measurements- it's all eyeballed. The batch I made today made about 3 quarts of sauce. Here's my best description:
Fresh Marinara Sauce
About 30 ripe Roma tomatoes
1 large onion
1/3 cup of a good extra virgin olive oil
2 T sugar
1 t salt
4 medium garlic bulbs
5-6l sprigs of fresh oregano, tied together (or 1/2 T dried oregano)
12-15 fresh basil leaves
1 small can Cento tomato paste (optional)
1. Wash tomatoes and cut off tops. This will make the peels slide off like a glove!
2. Set aside a large boil or pot of ice water.
3. Place tomatoes in a large pot of boiling water. Blanch for about 1-2 minutes to loosen skins (you can see when they are loose).
4. Remove from heat, drain, and plunge into ice water.
5. Skins should peel right off like a glove.
6. Peel each tomato one at a time and then "squish" it over a large bowl to break it up into small pieces and release juice. I keep the seeds but if you prefer, you can scoop the seeds out.
7. In the meantime, chop onion and saute it in half the olive oil.
8. When onions are soft, add tomatoes, sugar, salt, and rest of olive oil. Use your microplaner to grate the fresh garlic into the pot.
9. Simmer uncovered for 1.5 hours.
10. Chop basil and add to simmering sauce. Place sprigs of oregano (make sure they are tied together) in sauce and simmer for about another hour. The liquid level should go down and the sauce should be nice and thick (if you like it thicker, you can add a small can of a good tomato paste such as Cento (made from San Marzano tomatoes).
11. Remove bunch of oregano and scrape leaves off the stems and put back into sauce. Taste sauce. If tomatoes are too acid, you might want to add more sugar.
12. Cool. Let age a day in the refrigerator to let flavors develop fully.
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