27 September 2013

Crimes against tomatokind

I told Walt it was really a crime, or at least a sin, to cut up such beautiful tomatoes to make sauce. They were the gorgeous golden Jubilee tomatoes that he grew in the garden this year. We should have just eaten them fresh in salad, or on sandwiches, or however. But there was no way we could eat all of them right now.


You can be sure that we will enjoy the sauce this coming winter, when the fresh tomatoes will have run out. I've seen recipes for this kind of tomato sauce served with grilled or pan-roasted chicken, or with shrimp. Along with pasta, of course.


By this kind of sauce, I mean tomato-tarragon sauce with onion, garlic, and a little parsley (stems). We have a nice two-year-old tarragon plant in a pot that spent last winter on the glassed-in sun porch and is still growing strong. I used a big bunch of the estragon — more than you can see in the photo below — in the yellow tomato sauce, which is now in the freezer. I ran the sauce through the food mill, thinking I'll add some more fresh tarragon to it at serving time.


Yesterday, the work of undergrounding our electric wires continued outside. Around 10:30 in the morning, the crew arrived and started cutting and digging a trench across the road out back by the pond. I was in the kitchen making a batch of red tomato sauce for our lunch. Walt was out sawing logs. As I got the tomato sauce going on the stove, the inevitable happened. Our water was cut off.


The guys digging the trench had broken a main, and water was going everywhere. The mayor arrived and consulted with the crew. Some men from the water company showed up too. Luckily, Walt and I had a six-pack of mineral water in the cellar, so we were still able to cook our pasta and have the lunch we had planned. The water came back on after about three hours.

7 comments:

  1. This sauce looks good....
    I'll point Pauline at it...
    she's just about to chop herbs for our first batch of sauce.

    Pauline bottles ours... then brings them back to the boil in the oven at 100 Centipedes before screwing the lids down [jam jars or Mason jars]...
    or clipping them down if using the Le Parfaits.

    Works wonderfully and releases freezer space!

    If you have any Mason jars, Ken,
    Pauline's American colleagues answered her appeal for Mason lids, in spades!!
    We now have the standard lids in excess... the main part of an outer! We can spare a couple of dozen, easily.

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  2. Yummmmm.... if those big golden jubilee tomatoes taste anything like the little bitty sungold or sunsweet (or something) tomatoes I've been growing, then WOW! That will be a tasty sauce. Those golds have a different flavor than the reds-- so sweet!

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  3. The tomatoes and that sauce look really good. The French crew seems a lot more efficient than their American counterparts would have been!

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  4. Hi Yes a shame ,but just think the other way , your sauce is going to be amazing , made with FRESH tomatoes and you made it:-)

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  5. Bonjour, Ken. So on one of the last days of summer, you were slaving in the hot kitchen processing tomatoes while "Walt was out sawing logs" (stretched out under a shade tree perhaps?). Now that's a crime.

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  6. Another fabulous sauce you two have produced! I agree with you, Ken, that when there's fresh produce looking that good, it is hard to "put it away" for a rainy day compared to eating it fresh - but oh how you will enjoy it later.

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  7. C'est le problème avec les tomates : il y a abondance, mais pendant une courte période :-).

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