Here we are, part two of the pizza party series, featuring my home made pizza sauce now infused with tomato leaves for flavor. I recently learned that tomato leaves are in fact NOT poisonous, they're edible and medicinal (I recently wrote an article about this). When looking up recipes for how to use them, the main thing I found was either to add them to pesto or tomato sauce. Right then and there I resolved to use them the next time I make pizza, which happened to be this past tuesday. The tomato leaves were a revelation, the thing that my sauce has been missing all along.
The first step to any tomato sauce is to peel the tomatoes. The best and easiest way to go about this is through blanching them. In short, you get some salted water boiling, add the tomatoes that have been prepared. Cut out the blossom spot and cut an x on the opposite end of the tomato. I did this for all of the tomatoes before starting, as John did this step for me on the wood stove.
John was a huge help this pizza party. I was under a heavy glass deadline at the time. In an attempt to help keep me on the torch, he volunteered to do the actual cooking of the sauce. He also did the cleaning, which was a lot.
As the water gets boiling, prepare a bowl of water, room temperature. Other people will say this water needs to be ice water, but honestly it still works just fine with room tempurature water. Once the salted water is boiling, add the tomatoes until there's no room for more and continue to boil until the skins crack. Once they do, remove them and put them in the bowl of water. Repeat this process until all the tomatoes are done.
The cool water cools the tomatoes enough for the skin to really separate. Remove them from this water and just use your hands to slide off the skin, which should come off pretty easily. I feed the skins to my dogs afterwards.
I harvested a handful of tomato leaves for what was between 2.5-3.5 kilos of tomatoes. I'm honestly not sure on amounts, but what I used tasted awesome.
I trimmed an equal amount of basil off of several of my plants.
It left me with a nice bundle to blend into my tomato sauce.
Start filling a blender with the whole peeled tomatoes until it's half full.
At this point add the herbs, garlic (or garlic powder).
Fill up to the top and blend thoroughly. I ended up having to refill the blender with more tomatoes as there wasn't enough room, but I didn't add anything else.
Pour it into a pot.
Add a few tablespoons of olive oil and heat on medium low heat until the color deepens, the sauce thickens and it starts to smell amazing.
It should look something like this when it's done. If you've got tomato plants, I HIGHLY recommend you utilize the greens. They added a vine ripe flavor that I've not been able to achieve before. It's the sort of sauce that smells good enough to make you drool. It's the perfect complement to pizza but honestly could be adapted for any type of italian style sauce. For example, don't blend it, just cook the tomatoes down for a thick and chunky sauce.
Let me know if you try this recipe, or anything with tomato leaves. I'm extremely interested to try this in more of my food, as it was honestly such a good introduction using tomato leaves as an herb.