With summer drawing to a close and the availability of tasty tomatoes that can be transformed into various preserves, here’s a new option : to prepare a concentrate or base for a sauce, in advance, which will be ready to use, for the various tomato sauce preparations you’ll need, right up until next summer‘s tomato harvest !
The base consists mostly of tomatoes (the most ripe and fragrant ones that you can find, whether using only one variety or different varieties mixed together), that you have to prepare (slice and de-seed, but I like those little seeds and gelatin) and marinate the tomatoes, with lemon juice and salt, so the initial 3 kg of fresh tomatoes for the recipe, become 1,5 kg and this is before cooking them later on, because the tomatoes will lose their excess water and the flavors will be more concentrated.
The other vegetables in the concentrated sauce, which represent about one third of the total weight of the 1,5 kg of prepared tomatoes, is made with 2 parts mild onion or shallot, 1 part carrot, 1 part fennel bulb and celery and just a hint of garlic and other aromatics, that will cook and simmer ever so slowly and gently, until a perfect balance is struck. It’s a ready-to-use concentrated combination of tomatoes with a “mirepoix” or a “battuto” or “sofrito” addition.
The other aromatic ingredients I use, in small quantities, to deepen and develop the flavors are anchovies, bay leaves, some dried oregano, several stems of basil and parsley and especially tomato leaves (which really make a difference) and some fennel and coriander seeds too, alongside the salt and pepper.
The result will be a dense sauce, almost like a paste or a concentrate but not quite as thick, and oilier and saltier than a finished sauce. Why ? Because when you use the portions of this concentrated sauce or base, it will be recombined with twice its weight in jarred or canned crushed tomatoes, to prepare the final sauce for your pasta dishes, without any need to add more salt or olive oil, as it simmers again, to become perfect.
The 2 kg of sauce base or concentrate, correctly preserved and stored and refrigerated or frozen into smaller portions, will eventually be recombined with another 4 kg of either fresh, but most probably canned tomatoes (since it will be fall and winter and then spring), throughout the year, for a total amount of 6 kg of finished sauce. In other words, 20-30 servings of sauce for 20-30 servings of pasta.
It’s easier to store 2 kg of concentrated sauce base, in smaller convenient portions, in your refrigerator and/or freezer, than to store 6 kg of prepared tomato sauce in your pantry or cold cellar, after the fuss of correctly sterilizing and/or canning all of that.
It’s both a time-saving solution and a space-saving solution and any leftovers of opened jars of the preparation could also be used as a spread, in sandwiches or simply slathered on a piece of bread, for a savory snack.
I’ve just finished last year’s batch of this convenient preparation, because if correctly jarred and preserved, it will last up to one year in the refrigerator, so now it’s time to start again, before getting back to work and/or school soon (and don’t worry, if I remodify the recipe after making my new batch next week, because that happens sometimes, I’ll update it immediately here too).
The time you dedicate now, to preparing food in advance, will be the time you will have saved for later, for other activities, whether work or leisure … :)
