Sunday morning saw us at our local (in Adelaide) car boot sale stocking up on Fruit and Veg before heading home. Included in our haul was a 10kg box of tomatoes for $10.
So upon arriving home after the 6 hour drive what else was there to do but make pasta sauce! It was a perfect end to the weekend.
I think we'll be eating lots of pasta over the next couple of weeks...I've ended up with about 7 Litres of pasta sauce...and it is delicious, Steven and I had some last night for dinner.
Tatum's Car Boot Pasta Sauce
Ingredients
10kg box of tomatoes, washed and green stalks removed
3 red onions
2 garlic bulbs
5-10 small red chillies (omit if you aren't keen on chilli)
Olive Oil
Red Wine Vinegar
Freshly ground Salt & Pepper
2 Tbs sugar
about 5 stems of thyme, tied with kitchen string
Method
Heat Oven to about 150C
Cover 3 large baking trays with baking paper then with halved tomatoes, cut side up. Drizzle with vinegar and olive oil and grind on pepper and salt.
Cut the top off the garlic bulbs to expose the cloves, pop into a space on the baking trays, drizzle with olive oil and grind on some more salt.
Slide the trays into the oven and roast for about an hour, removing the garlic after about 30-40 minutes when the cloves are starting to ooze out. You don't want to overcook the garlic because it will get bitter.
While the tomoatoes are cooking in the oven get started on the rest of the sauce.
Skin and roughly chop the onions
Heat about 2-3 Tbs olive oil in the base of a stock pot. Add your onions and reduce heat to low.
As the onions start to cook quarter your tomatoes (or eighths if they are big ones, our were only small) and throw them in the pot as you cut them.
I had a helper for tomato chopping. He has become very interested in cooking and definitely more interested in vegetables since they have been cooking from their own kindy vegie garden.
The crazy excitement over the spanakopita he got from the greek lady for breakfast yesterday morning made me smile. Who knew a small boy could love spinach quite that much!
Keep adding tomatoes until your pot is nearing full, you will still need space to add the tomatoes from out of the oven but you will also loose some liquid to evaporation as the sauce cooks.
Cut the stalk off your chillies, halve them lengthways and add to the pot together with your tied up bunch of thyme. When you take the garlic out of the oven squeeze the caramelised cloves into the pot. Yum.
When the tomatoes in the oven are nearly done grab your stick blender and whizz up your sauce. Slide in the tomatoes a tray at a time and whizz again after addition. You want to get all the juice/oil/vinegar off the trays.
Pop it back on the stove to simmer for a little bit longer. For me it was for the time it took to cook some pasta.
Ideally you can now pop it into some sterilised bottles/jars but I don't have any so I'll be putting it into tupperware containers and freezing. If you are making this and have some basil poke a stalk of fresh basil into each jar before you tip in the sauce.
Last night Steven and I ate it as it was with penne and lots of good grated and shaved parmasen cheese. Tonight I'll be making a chicken pasta. Happy Days.
I'm linking up my little Sunday tomato adventure with point + shoot.
Hope that you had a lovely weekend!
Tatum xx