I promised you three different options for tomato sauce, and we’ve covered the basic jar and a homemade tomato mushroom sauce. But this post is about really homemade tomato sauce. The kind where you start with a 25 lb. box of discount tomatoes and recruit your family to work together for hours in the kitchen. I swear, they’ll thank me when they pull a container of sauce out of the freezer on a cold December evening. In the meantime, they’ll have to settle for credit here.

Let’s start with the raw materials. The tomatoes came from a Rhode Island farm which sold them at a discount as ‘canning tomatoes’. I am guessing that we started with about 25 lb. of tomatoes, but there were a few truly rotten ones in the box that had to be thrown away. We also used 2 lbs. of onions, 2 carrots, 2 stalks of celery, 2 heads of garlic, olive oil, salt, and basil.

We tried to create a tomato processing assembly line. First, my Dad cut an X in the bottom of the tomato. Then, he dipped the tomato in a large pot of boiling water for 30 seconds, and placed it in a bowl of ice water. After this point, it was easy for me to peel the skin.

Here’s where things got a little tricky. We tried a few different ways to remove the seeds using a food mill, but ended up doing things the old fashioned way with knives and fingers. If you quarter the tomato once it’s peeled, you can remove most of the seeds with your fingers. Then you can chop the tomato pieces into one bowl (or a large pot, since we didn’t have a bowl big enough), and pour the tomato juices from the cutting board into a different bowl to be strained. This was the most time consuming part of the project, not to mention that the kitchen was covered in tomato juice at the end! But it was so much more fun than opening a can.

In the meantime, we heated up 1/2 c. of olive oil in a pan and sauteed the minced garlic and the chopped onion, carrot, and celery for about 15 minutes. Finally, we were ready to combine the vegetables, the chopped tomatoes, and a portion of the accumulated juice in a very large stockpot (not shown, but it was perhaps an 8-10 quart pot.)

We let it simmer for a long time on the stove, about 4- 5 hours. While the sauce was cooking, we added a glug of red wine, 3 T of salt, and chopped fresh basil. The sauce was still fairly thin, so I also added a can of tomato paste. We probably shouldn’t have added so much of the tomato juice into the pot, but another can or two of paste would easily fix this issue. In the end, our sauce wasn’t spicy (but you could add more pepper and oregano), it wasn’t sweet (but you could add sugar), and it wasn’t rich (but you could add more oil). The sauce did have the undeniable good taste of fresh tomatoes.

There is a certain sense of satisfaction that I get when I sit down to a really great meal cooked from scratch. There is also a sense of satisfaction in using fresh local ingredients, and stocking the freezer for the upcoming fall. You might argue that it is more economical to use canned tomatoes, but since fresh tomatoes are available now, this was a lot more fun. We all enjoyed a pasta dinner, and then divided the sauce into containers for the freezer so we can remember that crazy September day we spent turning a big box of tomatoes into a fresh sauce.

Now this is a homemade sauce! And what really makes it special is the zucchini pasta. Credit for the whole dish goes to this recipe from The Front Burner Blog. Defintely check it out, because Emily takes you through this step by step. Yes, you’re going to make zucchini ribbons and eat it like pasta. But let’s make the sauce first.

I have wanted to make this dish ever since reading about these ‘Pretty in the Pan Stuffed Patty Pan Squash’. I did find patty pan squash once at the farmer’s market, but regular zucchini is so much more common, and I figured boats would be just as fun. I loved the way that Angela made garlic infused rice as the base for the stuffing so I kept that aspect of the original recipe but changed a few of the other ingredients based on what I had on hand. This recipe looks long, and it does take about an hour from start to finish, but it is straightforward. So says the girl who had plenty of patience after bumming around all day. Here are the boats ready to go into the oven:

Everyone who tried these zucchini boats liked them. There was extra stuffing which I baked on the side of the boats, and that was good on it’s own. So if the idea of the boats doesn’t suit you, think of the stuffing as another summer side dish. I think the key is that the rice mixture was fairly wet, and didn’t dry out in the oven. By the time this is out of the oven, your dishes will all be done and you can just sit down and enjoy.

3 zucchini
2 c. vegetable broth
1 t minced garlic
Sea salt
1 c. rice
8 baby carrots, or 3 medium carrots
1 small onion
3/4 c. black beans
1 T butter or margarine
2 T pesto (I used Amore pesto paste, but you could substitute tomato for a different flavor and color)

Cut zucchini in half lengthwise. Fill a large pot with 3-4″ of water, and bring to a boil. Simmer zucchini halves in the pot, covered, for about 5-7 minutes, or until softened. Remove from pot, and allow to cool. Scoop out the insides of the zucchini gently with a spoon. Mash the zucchini and set aside, and place the zucchini boats in a baking dish.

Bring vegetable broth, garlic, and a pinch of sea salt to a boil. Add rice, and simmer covered until cooked.

Place the mashed zucchini, carrots, and onion in the food processor and blend until finely chopped. (You can do this by hand, if you prefer.) Stir in the beans, butter or margarine, and pesto. When the rice is done, mix the vegetables and beans into the rice.

Stuff zucchini boats with the rice mixture, and bake at 375F for 20 minutes.

The ricotta stuffed French toast was more of an afterthought; the real purpose for having ricotta in the house was to make this basil ricotta pie. Yes, there is still plenty of basil on the plant, and in fact the recent rain seems to have fueled more growth. This is a super easy weeknight recipe, and makes a great dinner paired with a nice big salad. You’ll still have time to go out and catch the sunset.