Dilly Beans!

 

Marinara Sauce

The summer garden provides so many possibilities. The sky's the limit, as each individual can use any ingredient found to go in all sorts of directions. Recipes are not always necessary – it's good to learn to cook from intuition and do lots of experimentation. That's how we learn!

Here's an intuitive/experimental process for doing Marinara Sauce from the garden. As always, for this blog I use what is harvested from the Grow City Teaching Garden.

First, gather your ingredients together. Here I have Amish Paste tomatoes, white onion, Wise Colossus garlic (this bulb was harvested in fall of 2023) and some herbs: basil, thyme, oregano, and parsley. These all came from the Grow City garden.

Sometimes I save seeds from items harvested, in hopes of adding them to the Knox County Seed Library. I did not save seeds from these tomatoes – they are an earlier harvest that had problems from weather and moisture fluctuations (cracking, blossom end rot) and I don't want that to carry through via the seeds. We should be able to save seed from some later harvests of Amish Paste tomatoes, if all goes well.

I started by trimming off the ends of the tomatoes and any bad parts, then cutting up the good parts.

Look how nice and meaty they are!

Special note: you might choose to remove the skins before trimming and cutting the tomatoes. I experimented with leaving the skins on. To remove them, drop tomatoes in boiling water for a very short time, then transfer them to cold water. Drain, and then the peel is easy to remove.

I then peeled the onion, removed the ends and cut it into wedges. I chose a clove of garlic (Wise Colossus cloves are huge), peeled it, and cut it into chunks.

If I was putting these directly in the pot, I might cut them up finer. But I'm doing roasted veggies! Roasting the veggies ahead of other cooking concentrates their flavor and lends a slight caramelization. It makes a sauce extra special.

I'm also adding fennel seeds. I decided to use whole fennel seeds and roast them with the veggies. If I was going to add them right to a pot or pan on the stove, I would lightly toast them on a dry pan first to really bring out the flavor and aroma. I could then choose to add the toasted seeds whole or to grind them.

Here are the tomatoes, onions, garlic and fennel seeds on the tray, with a little olive oil poured over them. They are ready to put in a 350 degree oven.

Peek at the tray of veggies now and then. Just don't let them burn. Otherwise, watch for them to be fully roasted. There may be a tinge of char on some items, but that will be fine, and easy to remove, if you want to.

Roasted veggies out of the oven! I could use a little less oil next time, but it will be fine. It really depend on how much oil you want to end up in the sauce.

And, into the pot they go. Here they are, starting to cook. You can see the tomato skins pulling away from the tomatoes. This is another stage where you could remove those, if you'd like. I'm leaving them in for now, and we'll see how it goes. I did decide to remove some of the tiny charred pieces.

Tossing the whole herbs on top. I feel so chef-y when I do this! You could choose to remove the herbs from their stems and chop them before adding. But I'm going to use the whole herbs, on-stems, just to flavor the sauce.

Let it cook down on simmer. Keep checking to see how it looks and smells. You can see the tomato skins here. I could also remove them at this point, but I decided to keep them in.

It's all cooked down. I removed the herbs and then I needed to get is all broken down, blended, and made into a smooth sauce. There are various ways to do that. I thought I'd experiment with using one of these. I have a tendency to call this a “hand blender”, which is a clumsy name, and I'm sure there are other names for these.

Well, this experiment was okay, but not great. For one, it was taking so long to blend the ingredients this way! This kind of blender is not a great choice for this job. And another thing …

Splatters! All over the place. This was not due to the kind of blender as much as it was to the shape and size of pan. I do not recommend using this king of blender unless you have ingredients in a deeper container. This would all work much better with a regular blender or food processor.

But, I did get it done!!!

Doesn't it look great?!

I transferred it to a bowl and added some salt and pepper. How much? To your taste. Just add a little, taste, see if you want to add a little more.

I had still left in the tomato skins, though they are chopped up and not as visible as before.

(At this point, you might also choose to add some red wine. Of course!)

How would it be?

Well, it turned out to be so very delicious!! And the tomato skins were very tender.

We had it for supper on pasta with my husband's homemade meatballs and a grating of cheese on top.

Magnifico!!

Want something else delicious to do with those garden tomatoes?

Look for a previous blog post on making Caprese Salad.