Tomato Conserve

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN "Domates Konservesi"
PER ITALIANO "Conserva di Pomodoro"

I don't know if any of you read "A Game of Thrones", the first book in the epic fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire" written by American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin,  or simply saw the first two seasons of its TV series adaptation. Recently I find myself repeating very often their famous motto: Winter is coming! :)

This is why there is an increasing number of recipes in the blog for the things that could be stored for winter.  Since I publish what I am actually doing, with the winter in horizon, this is what I've been doing lately.

Before I proceed to the recipe I'd like to tell you about my experience with gardening.
The close followers of the blog might recall my humble attempt to grow some vegetables. This year, for the first time in my life,  I finally found enough courage to give vegetable gardening a try. In some of my earlier posts I mentioned how it all started, I sure owe you to mention how it ended as well.

In short, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers were very fruitful and so amazingly tasty!
Also the herbs (basil, sage, mint, parsley, rosemary, thyme and melissa) have been very productive.
I was a bit late to plant my aubergine plants so the number of my aubergines could be counted on the fingers of one hand, but then again I had only two plants anyway.

Only thing disappointed me was my iceberg salads. They all died one by one. I was told that highly probably the snails were responsible for that. I hadn't used any chemicals since I wanted to have an organic garden. I've recently found out a product against snails, which is suitable also to those like me who prefer organic gardening. I plan to try it for next year's crop.

As I said before, the winter is coming so I removed all the plants except the herbs and prepared the garden in order to plant vegetables for winter season. I seeded spinach and corn salad. This is the first time that I seed directly to the soil so I am very curious how they are going to turn out.
I planted fennel in the half area of the remaining land. Dear Giuliano, our close friend Andrea's father, had given me some fennel plants after he had thinned his garden.
I planted also some strawberry plants in the last part of the garden. They are expected to bear fruit in late May which I am looking forward to.
We will see what our winter gardening adventure may bring.

In addition to the tomatoes I grew myself, when Giuliano sent me a huge crate of cherry tomatoes from his very last harvest of the year, I was happily obliged to prepare some tomato conserve. It was such a generous quantity I made some pasta sauces as well besides tomato conserve. So, I had the chance to prepare also Arrabbiata Sauce, Puttanesca Sauce, Tuna Sauce, Tomato and Basil Sauce and Siciliana Sauce. I stored them as portions for 2 people as I previously did with my Pesto alla Genovese, Pesto alla Siciliana and Pepper Salsa.

Ingredients:
1000g tomatoes (cut roughly and drained)
40g onion
1 clove of garlic
40g of celery stick, roughly cut
5g parsley leaves
5 basil leaves
Optional: thyme, oregano, marjoram (I used thyme)
1 tsp salt


Preparation:

• Wash tomatoes. Cut out the core piece at the top of the tomato, then cut roughly into pieces and let them drain. (If you wish remove the seeds as well. Since I had cherry tomatoes I didn't feel any need to remove the core piece. I just halved them and removed the seeds of most of them)

• Put all the ingredients in TM Bowl and blend for 1 minute on Speed 10.

• Place the MC on TM Lid in an inclined position and cook for 30 minutes at Varoma Temperature on Speed 1.

• Transfer the boiling sauce into sterilised jars, close them tightly.

• Place the jars in a deep pot. Fill it with water.

• Bring to boil and then boil for 20 minutes on low heat.
• When the water gets cold remove the jars, wipe and store in a cool dry place.

Enjoy..

I am very happy with this tomato sauce. It tastes so good!
So far I've used it as a simple pasta sauce and also while preparing Pizza Margherita.


Adapted with a few modifications from the recipe titled as "Conserva di Pomodoro-cotta" in Io e il mio Bimby.