100 mile eating

Tomato Sauce and Furnace Fixing

By Sam ⋅ September 25, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

In between reading and writing about the election I am doing normal things.  Well… maybe not as much work as I should.

We’ve had a bumper crop of tomatoes and will be harvesting until the frost.  So far we’ve had lots of pasta sauce, tomato, black olive and pine nut salad, tomato and mozzarella salad, roasted tomatoes – in salad, on sandwiches and in pasta sauce, and, of course, tomato sandwiches.

And we’ve been making ketchup and tomato sauce.  We’ve made three batches of ketchup, each from a different recipe.  The first batch tasted a lot like barbeque sauce, not a fave of mine, but good.  The second batch was pretty good and the third batch was stunning. The recipe is at the end of the post.

We’ve also made three batches of tomato sauce.  It’s all canned and processed waiting to be transformed into pasta sauce in the winter.  It’s a pretty basic sauce, tomatoes, a little oil, a little wine vinegar, chopped onions and chopped garlic, fresh oregano, and salt and pepper.  The tomatoes, garlic, onions and oregano are from the garden.  It’s the first time I’ve ever grown stuff and preserved it.  I feel so smug.

Today, just as I finished labelling the last batch of tomato sauce, the furnace man arrived.  There had been a very strong oil smell which didn’t seem good.  He was laughing. We had told him we thought we might have an oil leak.  "Oil leak!  Look at the floor!"

Oops!  I thought that was water from the heavy rain last week.

He cleaned the floor and put down some magic stuff that pulls the oil out of the concrete.  We have to leave it for about a week.  He also put down some kind of odour absorber.  He fixed the pump, that was the problem.  It wasn’t spraying in oil the way it’s supposed to, it was dripping it in a continuous stream so it wasn’t all burning.

After he’d done all that he turned on the furnace to burn off the oil that was still there.  I opened all the windows and doors to try and get rid of the smell.  The chimney belched black smoke for about half an hour.

Disgusting!

Fresh Tomato Ketchup Recipe

3 hours | 30 min prep
yields 4 cups

If you like your ketchup a bit chunky you can skip the food mill or blender step.

•   5 lbs tomatoes, ripe, quartered
•   3 medium red onions, finely chopped
•   1 red bell pepper, cored and seeded
•   1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
•   1 tablespoon black peppercorns
•   1 tablespoon mustard seeds
•   1 tablespoon allspice berry
•   2 teaspoons whole cloves
•   2 teaspoons celery seeds
•   1 slice fresh ginger
•   1 cinnamon stick
•   2 bay leaves
•   1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
•   1 teaspoon sweet paprika
•   1/4 teaspoon ground mace
•   1 cup cider vinegar
•   1 teaspoon coarse salt
•   1 pinch cayenne

1.    Place the tomatoes, onions, bell pepper and garlic in a large pot.
2.    Bring to boil over high heat, reduce the heat to medium-low and
simmer, stirring occasionally until the vegetables are very soft, about
30 minutes.
3.    Pass through the finest blade of a food mill to make a
semi-smooth puree Alternatively, puree in the blender until smooth and
pass through a fine strainer Place the puree back in the cleaned soup
pot.
4.    Place the peppercorns, mustard seeds, allspice berries, cloves,
celery seeds, ginger, cinnamon stick and bay leaves on a piece of
cheesecloth and tie it up to form a bag.
5.    Add to the tomatoes, along with the brown sugar, paprika, mace, cider vinegar, salt and cayenne.
6.    Simmer slowly, stirring frequently, until the ketchup is very
thick, 1 1/2 to 2 hours Remove the cheesecloth bag and discard.
7.    Ketchup can be cooled and stored in a sealed plastic container in the refrigerator for 2 weeks.
8.    Alternatively, you can put ketchup in sterilized jars To do so,
first wash the jars in hot, soapy water Rinse well Bring a large pot of
water to a boil Add 4 pint jars and lids and boil 1 minute Remove with
tongs and drain.
9.    While the ketchup is still hot, pour it into the sterilized jars,
leaving 1/4-inch headroom Seal and place in boiling water bath for 12
minutes Remove and cool.