Oh, la la!

Perhaps a rat, albeit a cartoon one, is not exactly what you expected when you clicked through to my blog. But this little rat is a hint about what we'll be creating today! Can you guess? 

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Well, first, I'm going to share my recipe for tomato paste with you, because the Mystery Recipe calls for tomato paste, and the stuff from the can--while convenient--is awful. And since you're a great cook, you know it's very easy to make your own tomato paste! 

Basically, tomato paste is just a lot of tomatoes that have been reduced, and then reduced, and then reduced some more. It's great for a day like today--rainy, gross and cold--when you can monitor the stove but still have work to do. This recipe is time intensive, but for most of it you're just letting the tomatoes do their thing (this doesn't mean that you shouldn't keep an eye on them!)

Home-made Tomato Paste

Side note: the amount of tomatoes you use for this recipe depends upon how much paste you want--remember, you can store it and save it for later! I've used about 17lbs of tomatoes and gotten about 8 cups of paste. For this recipe I will operate under that assumption, but you can reduce the ingredients as necessary.

Ingredients

17lbs of roma tomatoes

A few glugs of olive oil

2-3 teaspoons of salt

Directions

Fill a large pot with water, and bring to a boil. While your water is heating up, cut a cross on the bottom of your tomatoes. Pop your tomatoes into the water (you can do this in groups, obviously) and let them cook for a few minutes, until the skin starts to come off. Let them cool down a bit and peel off the skin. Slice the tomatoes in half, cut out the hard core and, if you'd like, scoop out the seeds (you can leave them in for texture if you'd like). 

Chop up the tomatoes and add them, with the salt, to a pot and simmer for about an hour. Make sure you stir often to prevent the tomatoes from sticking to the bottom of the pan and burning! Remove the tomatoes from heat and process through a blender until smooth. Return the tomatoes to the pot and continue to cook them very slowly for about another 2-3 hours, until the paste holds its shape with a spoon. Remember to stir! 

Spoon your tomato paste into jars, and leave about 1 inch at the top. Pour a little olive oil on top and seal the jars to store. You're done! There, that wasn't so bad, was it?

The Mystery Recipe is coming soon, so keep an eye out for it!