Foodie Friday: I’ve Got Tomatoes Growing Out of My Ears!

Let’s talk about food!

After picking yet another bumper crop of tomatoes, Mr. Piglet asked what on earth we were going to do with them. I shrugged. Make some more chutney? There’s an old saying that ‘walls have ears’, but I’m less suspicious of the walls and more suspicious that the ‘ears’ are embedded in our cellphones or Alexa because what should pop up in my Facebook feed is a random recipe reel showing how to make bolognese style tomato Passata sauce.

I scribbled down the recipe. Of course, I usually improvise with many of these recipes that blast my FB feed, as half the instructions are missing. Anyway, I made some notes and decided to give it a try.

Passata-style tomato sauce

• 1kg chopped Tomatoes (including skins)
• 1 sliced red or yellow pepper. (I used a yellow pepper from the garden).
• 1 diced beetroot. I only had cooked beetroot (no vinegar)
• 1 diced carrot,
• 8 crushed cloves of garlic.
• 1 teaspoon of salt,
• 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika or piri piri,
• 2 teaspoons of dried oregano.

Bake in oven at 200C for 1 hour or until everything is soft. I found the carrots took the longest to soften.

Once cooked,

• I added a generous drizzle of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of sugar. I used brown sugar.

Once the mixture cooled, I whizzed into a sauce.

I could hardly wait to taste this creation, and OMG, it was delicious!! I won’t buy more shop-bought tomato passata sauce for Pizza or Pasta while we have so many tomatoes!

Sadly, the 1kg of toms only produced a gherkin-sized jar of sauce + half a cup so the following day I doubled the quantity and made another batch.

**While the recipe said to pour into jars and ‘store in the fridge,’ it didn’t say for how long. Then, the old grey matter kicked in. Hang on, there’s no vinegar and like chutney, so what preserves it? Poo! I’ve got to stuff it in my already crowded freezer. Next questions Can I freeze in jars? – Obviously, yes. NB, don’t fill the contents of the jar to the top as the liquid will expand when it freezes.

I will use this sauce as the base for lasagne, spag bol, courgette bake, pizza etc.

**Halfway through the night, I woke up with a thought – SENIOR MOMENT ALERT: I could freeze the sauce in bags, which would be far easier and quicker to defrost.

How to Join the Foodie Friday Challenge

Let’s talk about food, whether it’s sharing your favourite recipes, growing fruit and vegetables, your harvest ups and downs, hints and tips, or pictures of plates of food – even diets. If it’s food-related, why not post it on your blog and add it to the Foodie Friday Challenge

• Create a post about food, such as sharing your favourite recipes, diets, growing fruit and vegetables, pictures of food etc and include the tag: Foodie Friday. You’re welcome to use previous ‘food-related’ posts.
• Link to my weekly food share post to create a pingback, and I will endeavour to visit and comment.
• You are welcome to include the Foodie Friday badge on your blog. If you can’t save it from the image below, please send me an email, and I’ll send it as a jpeg.
• Don’t forget to add a link to your post when you comment below so we can keep track and support each other.
• Please check out other bloggers’ posts

Now I’m finished cooking and bottling, it’s time to put my feet up and check out Natalie’s weekend coffee share.