Oh yeah, a recipe

Sorry folks, it's been a crazy week. And I know there are hundreds of avid blog readers out there, incessantly hitting the "refresh" button at the top of your screen, waiting, salivatingly, for my tomato puree recipe to pop up as a new blog. (Hey, a girl can dream . . . )

Drumroll please . . .

Tomato Puree, My Way (with pictures - Yes, I am recycling pictures. No, I did not have time to make another batch of tomato sauce this week):

1. Boil water in a largish pot (not a stock pot, but something you'd use to make a decent sized batch of spaghetti noodles).

2. Blanch tomatoes, four or five at a time, until their skins crack.

3. Remove the cracked tomatos and set them on a plate or your favorite snowman platter.
4. If a tomato hangs out in the water for a long time and does not crack (like my tiny tomatoes, and the romas I used from our CSA share - not pictured above) go ahead and pull it out.

5. Peel the skins off and core the tomatoes. This should be easy. It goes faster if one person blanches tomatoes while another skins them. Be careful - they might be hot. (Some people dip the tomatoes in ice water first. My mom never did that step, so neither did I. It is faster and the tomatoes don't get waterlogged, but you do have to watch your fingers. Especially if you're planning keep them in good shape so you can dunk them into a pan of scalding water in a few hours.) (By the way, after a rough night where it literally felt like both hands were on fire, I woke up in the morning and my hands were fine. I went to work and helped small children make hide paintings My feet, on the other hand . . .)

6. Cut the skinned tomatoes into chunks and put them into a really big bowl, cutting off any bad parts first. (When I did this part alone, in the morning, with the first 15 lbs of tomatoes, I seeded the tomatoes and squeezed the juice out, according to a recipe I found online. I discovered with my chinois set that this was an entirely unnecessary step, and wasted time and good tomato pulp - especially from the romas.)

7. Grab a handful of tomato chunks, stick them in the bottom of the chinois set (wikipedia spells it chinoise, listing chinois as an alternate spelling, but I'm going with what was on my otherwise-utterly-unhelpful packaging), and move the wooden cone (kind of like a mortar and pestle, but with a sieve instead of a solid bowl on the bottom) around in a circular motion. I used the chinois set over a large glass cake pan the second time around, because it held more, and I didn't want to scratch my stainless steel pot. Not that I wanted to scratch the cake pan . . . surely someone out there has a better suggestion.) I thought this would be difficult. Since the chinois set came with literally no instructions (not even washing instructions) I was not sure what would happen when I put the tomatoes in. The holes looked larger than tomato seeds - I thought the seeds would fall right through. I tried a tiny amount of tomatoes (which didn't really have that many seeds anyway because I seeded the first batch) and put them in, mashing them around with the wooden cone. I didn't know what to expect, but was delighted to see a little puddle of what really looked like tomato paste under the contraption. I'd been prepared to take the chinois set back to the store (you can see the plastic bags that the pieces had been wrapped in in the background) if it didn't give me the results I wanted. I'd read one recipe that called for making puree in a blender, so I had a back-up plan. But I gave the chinois set a try, and was very pleasantly surprised. The chinois set worked, and I didn't have to use any electricity to get the puree. Very cool. (Getting off the grid is going to become my next big obsession, after I've fully conquered home canning and locovorism. Just so you know. But I digress.)

8. Continue this until your pasty puddle of tomato below the chinois set is overflowing, and pour it into one of several containers you have sitting out for this purpose. (Assuming you're going for the full 10 quarts.)
9. Load up the chinois set for another round of smashing.
10. Use your tomato puree to make tomato sauce.

11. Have some of your family over for dinner to sample the tomato sauce, to thank your dad for his help, and to show off a little. Make homemade garlic croutons from homemade bread to serve with your sister's homemade raspberry vinaigrette. Use your dad's garden flowers as a centerpiece. Take a walk by the river. Actually feel chilly for the first time all summer. Forget to take a picture. Oh wait, skip that last one!
Thanks dad! I'm glad I get to grow stuff and cook stuff with you. Next time we'll have to remember to eat off of our own pottery! (And take pictures of the meal.)