homemade tomato paste is relatively easy
I say relatively easy because it takes A LOT of time (in my case, about three days but don’t let that deter you, I stopped and started quite a bit). There is nothing hard about it… really. I encourage you to take some extra tomatoes from your late summer/early fall glut and make something you can enjoy on a cold winter’s evening.
I used about a large salad bowl’s worth of Roma tomatoes. We inadvertently planted one Roma bush this year, thinking it was another varietal. But when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade!
Having never made homemade tomato paste, I searched the Internet for an easy recipe. This one, from the Italian Dish blog, was great:
http://theitaliandishblog.com/imported-20090913150324/2009/9/20/make-your-own…
I love the name Sicilians have for this type of tomato paste: estratto (literally: extracted). I followed the directions rather loosely (not having a food mill or much free time last week):
1. Day One: I trimmed the stem end off each tomato then popped them into boiling water for about five minutes to loosen the skins. At this point, I got tired and threw the bowl of skinned tomatoes into the fridge for the night.
2. Day Two: I de-seeded the tomatoes by hand (time consuming!!!) and then mashed them up as directed. I pre-heated the oven to 300 degrees and roasted them on an olive oil covered cookie sheet for about two hours, then turned the whole thing over to roast another hour. By this time, it was late at night and I wanted to go to bed so I turned off the oven and left the cookie sheet in place (covered with aluminum foil).
3. Day Three: The next morning, I finished the roasting portion (another hour and a half) and transferred the results to a 16-oz Ball jar. I topped it off with a bit of extra virgin olive oil and put it in the fridge. Voila!
That entire bowl of tomatoes yielded exactly 16 ounces of estratto, officially making it “red gold” in our house. My plan is to appreciate this as a condiment rather than use it as an ingredient in pasta sauces. It tastes REALLY good and I mostly want to enjoy it on grilled Italian bread (sort of a rustic bruschetta). We’re planning to bring it to my friend Becky’s dinner party next week; a lot of our Italian vacation friends will be there and I think they’ll love it.
Anyone out there up for trying this recipe? I’m curious if you get similar results.