Month: January 2021

All good marinara sauce begins with an argument. That’s what gives it spice. At our house, the argument comes in late February, and it usually takes place in the little room right off the kitchen, which is the only part of the whole farm we haven’t found a name for other than “the little room right off the kitchen.”

The argument starts like this: “I don’t think you’re planting enough tomatoes,” I say looking at the little trays of seeds all lined up under the grow lights on the plant rack that we have set up by the window in the little room right off the kitchen.

“What do you mean?” Vanessa says. “I planted like… twenty seeds.” She starts counting off, “Let’s see… six Amish paste, four Carmellos, two Cherokee Purples, a couple of Brandywines—one red and one yellow—two Black Vernissage, two or three Mortgage Lifters, uh… uh… something else, and a couple of cherry tomatoes for Buck.”

“Exactly,” I say.

“Exactly what?”

The tension in her voice and the slight flaring of her nostrils indicate that I should drop this topic, but then I think about the possibility of abject tomato poverty looming over late July (an infestation of tomato worms, a blight, swarming locusts), so against both my nature and my better judgment, I forge ahead. “Exactly,” I say again. “Exactly not enough.”

“You always plant too much,” she says. “And then I end up taking care of it.”

She’s right. I do always plant too much. Call it a character flaw if you want. (I prefer to call it a character feature.) It’s just that the only perfect garden is the February garden, the one I am planning (not even planning, really, just dreaming about), the one that exists months before we put a single seed or a tender shoot in the ground. The February garden is amazing—lush, green, weedless, perfectly watered, and filled with beneficial insects, pollinators from the dreamiest reaches of my mind. That is the garden that gets me through late winter, the garden I’m protecting.

“If you want more,” she says, “you plant it. But you also have to take care of it.”

And she’s also right about the tending. She does end up doing more of the daily weeding and cleaning and snipping and picking and bagging than I do. I make a mental note to work in the garden every morning this coming summer, even though that’s the time that I usually reserve for writing. The root of the problem is perspiration. Vanessa hates to sweat, so she does outside work in the early morning. I like to sweat, and I’m happy to sweat after lunch in exchange an hour or two at the computer with my breakfast and a cup of Earl Gray. For us to work together, someone has to give something up. Hence the tension.

“That’s okay,” I say, trying to convey a slightly downcast tone as I slowly step out of the little room right off the kitchen to the actual kitchen. “I’m sure these will be enough.”

This may sound as if I’m giving in, but it’s part of the recipe. Good marinara may get its spice from argument, but great marinara gets its depth (what we now call “umami”) from a pinch of resentment.

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By mid-July we are over-flowing with tomatoes of all sizes, shapes and colors. Heirlooms (Red and Yellow Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter, Cherokee Purple) litter every counter in the kitchen, a cereal bowl of bright red cherry tomatoes sits next to the coffee pot, golf ball-sized salad tomatoes (Black Vernissage) line the over-turned cardboard tops of copy paper boxes, and two mostly full milk crates of Amish paste plum-style tomatoes sit on the floor of the little room right off the kitchen.

If I were to admit it, which I won’t, Vanessa was right. She had planted enough, though in early May I did drag home a couple pots of some variety or other, like puppies, and ask if we could keep them, p-l-e-a-s-e.

On a hot afternoon, I drag out the scales, the food mill, and the biggest pots and bowls we own, and I check the propane tank to make sure we have enough to bring about four gallons of water to a boil and keep it there for about an hour. I am generally in charge of making marinara for a couple of reasons. First, I have the upper body strength to lift a five-gallon pot of water or tomato juice, and second, I’m not afraid of propane.

The following recipe is based on one we found in Put ‘em Up: A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook, by Sherri Broo… (years ago, one of our dogs chewed the cover off the book and it’s now held together with a large binder clip, so that’s all I got).

Marinara Sauce

Ingredients:

• 25 pounds of tomatoes (I have made it with as few as 15 lbs.). Plum or paste tomatoes are best because they have less liquid, but you can use whatever you have and adjust the cooking time.
• 1 pound of onions, finely chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
• 3 tablespoons of bottled lemon juice per quart (added to the jars, later)
• 1 teaspoon of salt per quart (added to the jars, later)

 Making the Sauce:

1. Cut 5 pounds of tomatoes in half, quarters if they are large, and put them in a large non-reactive* pot with enough water to cover the bottom—to keep them from burning. Bring them to a boil while crushing and stirring. A potato masher works well for this.
2. After you have crushed the tomatoes and they’re starting to boil, cut 5 more pounds and add them.
3. Continue until you’ve used up all your tomatoes or the pot is full.

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Note: you don’t have to peel or seed the tomatoes, though I usually do cut off any greenery that might still be attached.

• Once all the tomatoes are included and crushed, reduce the heat and let them simmer for fifteen or twenty minutes. (This is a good time to dice the onions and mince the garlic.)
• Remove the tomatoes from the heat and let them cool for five minutes or so.
• Run them through a food mill to remove the skins and seeds. This is the messy part because the skins, seeds, and pulp will fill up the food mill pretty quickly, so you are constantly cleaning it out. Just be sure to have a couple big pans within reach and don’t be afraid to make a mess. You will make a mess. But everything can be cleaned.
• Once you have run all the tomatoes through the food mill, you will have separated the tomatoes into two parts: juice and glop. The juice will become marinara, the glop is good compost, and chickens like it if you have chickens.
• Pour the juice back into a large, non-reactive pot. (If you used 25 pounds of tomatoes, you should have around 3 gallons of juice.)
• Add the diced onions and minced garlic, bring to a simmer.
• Sherri Broo…suggests cooking the sauce for about 1.5 to 2 hours. We usually cook it for twice that long, and still the sauce is too thin to use without thickening later.

*Note: A non-reactive pot is one that won’t react when cooking acidic foods, like tomatoes. Examples of non-reactive pots are stainless steel, Teflon, ceramic, glass, and metal with enamel coating. Do NOT use cast iron, aluminum, or copper.

Canning:

1. Transfer the sauce to sterilized quart jars, leaving a half inch of headroom.
2. Add 3 tablespoons of lemon juice and one teaspoon of salt to each jar.
3. Wipe rims with a clean cloth.
4. Put a sterilized lid on each jar and secure it with a band.
5. Process in a boiling hot bath for 45 minutes.
6. Remove the heat and the canner lid to let the jars “rest” for 5 minutes.
7. Remove jars from the water and set aside for 24 hours before removing the bands.
8. Store for up to a year.

Notes: 25 pounds of tomatoes normally yields 6 to 7 quarts of sauce, depending upon how long you cook it, and how thick it gets. Vanessa likes to add a few tablespoons of tomato paste to thicken the sauce when she’s simmering it for use.

This year, we ended up with about thirty quarts of marinara sauce for this winter. They are safely stored in an old cedar armoire that we converted to a storage pantry a few years ago. Vanessa thinks we will have plenty to get us through the year.

Personally, I think we could use a few more.