Back story
I hesitated to give you this 'recipe' today, because it really isn't one as such. But it is one of the most delicious and useful winter helps that I always love to have on hand.
This year I decided not to get myself overloaded with tomatoes.It's wonderful fun when you see them developing, and It goes perfectly with my gardening efforts too. But even if you don't have a garden, tomatoes are plentiful and inexpensive at this time of the year.
Canned tomato sauce could never hold a candle to this one though, made with all the herbs and spices you enjoy for flavour, thick in texture, with a little or big kick of hot pepper to tease your taste buds. It's a fantastic way to deal with the masses of red, ripe tomatoes you tend to end up with.
This isn't a hard recipe. You can do whatever you like for a couple of hours as it goes from raw to incredibly rich TOMATO SAUCE
You're gonna need:
One or more deep baking pans, lined with foil, and sprayed lightly with vegetable oil.
As many tomatoes as you want, sliced into chunks. Even cherry tomatoes can be used - just stab them so they wont squirt in your eyes later on!
1 onion, also coarsely chopped, and tucked into the tomatoes.
2 tiny, extremely hot chili peppers, more, less or none _ your choice!
Your favorite herbs - I use handfuls of basil, and oregano. but you can use any that you like.
Drizzle with some olive oil - you don't need much.
Roast in the oven set at 300 deg. F. It'll take a couple of hours, depending on how much juice you have in those tomatoes.
Let them cool, at your convenience. Now put them through the medium blade of your fantastic food mill. These simple things are inexpensive to buy, efficient, and can be multi-purpose too.
You'll end up with a good quantity of really thick tomato sauce.
Now portion it into freezer bags or containers and freeze it, to use whenever you really don't feel like a whole lot of fuss in the coming days!