Winter 2007—San Marzano Pasta Sauce Production
I should start off by making it clear. Yes, these are really great San Marzano variety tomatoes grown organically last season at Tantre Farm in Chelsea and yes they are going to make a great tasting tomato sauce. But, I understand that there is a real San Marzano tomato from the Sarnese-Nocerino area of Italy, and that it does (and should) have its own denomination of origin (D.O.P.). The "Red Gold" of Italy has its own characteristics and flavor qualities that could be impossible to duplicate in our own back yards. This is still up for debate in some circles, but I would personally side with the terroir folks. We are not trying to replicate its exact flavors here, rather we are just trying to make the best tomato sauce possible with the tomatoes from one of our favorite farms and maybe warm up your winter a little.
This whole project started a few years ago when Dr. Marty Heller and I had the bold idea of growing all our canned tomato needs in the summer, freeze them and pull them out into production when we needed to make another batch of the tomato soup. This way we could grow the variety of tomato we wished, handle the product from start to finish and increase his production on the farm to give him more capital to grow the farm business it self. This worked out OK the first year, and we harvested some 600 lbs of descent tomatoes (the goal was 2200 lbs) and made some tasty soup out of it until they were gone. Since then, Marty stopped growing at Turtle Springs Farm and Tantre and I attempted the project a few years in a row with some unsuccessful results. Some blights, some water damage and some years later Tantre had a small harvest of some really great tasting tomatoes. This leads us to the 200 lbs in our currently in our freezer.
The grand vision here is to make a large batch of classic Pomodoro sauce and blow it out during Italian month here at the deli by selling it by the quart, on the sales line hot with a bowl of pasta and cheese and maybe a few great lasagnas thrown in for our friends in catering. I would rather not freeze the sauce and we can't legally preserve it in jars to sell for long periods of time, so that gives us a little over a week to celebrate.
Last week Gregg, Sarah and I made a small test batch of sauce. It turned out great. Simple method and simple ingredients lend this sauce to a wide variety of uses. With small additions of flavor whether it be from a dash of fennel pollen or shaved truffle salami you can make great pasta dishes, meatballs, or throw in some roasted peppers and give it to a hunk of grilled polenta. Use it for the base to your ratatouille or capanata or even just something to dip your bread into. Whatever suits you, this sauce should be able to handle it. Tomatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, fresh basil and a little bit of jarred Italian Estratto are all it takes to make our sauce. Tomorrow we are going to start the long process of sauce making by peeling the tomatoes. This is why I like freezing them so much. Oddly enough when you freeze roma style tomatoes they freeze individually and don't stick together in a large mass. This makes it extremely easy to peel just by tossing them in warm water and squeezing them. This method actually gives you less waste and the traditional scoring and blanching method. San Marzano's are known for their low seed content, but we are still going to remove the seeds for texture and flavor sake. Our next step is cooking the tomatoes for around an hour to reduce the water content and give the tomatoes a head start while we are prepping the rest of the ingredients. To start assembling the sauce; First the olive oil and the bruised garlic are slowly heated together until the garlic gets lightly brown now remove it and save it for your garlic cream cheese or garlic spreads. The flavor of the garlic is where we want it, in the oil. Now for my favorite part, with the oil still hot but not hot enough to smoke add whole leaf fresh basil. You are basically adding water to hot oil so watch out. Do it fast and stand back a bit for the first few seconds. Fry the basil in the hot oil until crisp and breaking apart, now add the Estratto and cook gently for 5 to 10 minutes depending on the size of batch. Add the tomatoes salt and pepper and cook. I suspect we will end up cooking our batch of sauce for around three to four hours and taking 8 to 10 in total for the entire process. It will be a team event taking both shifts in the kitchen with everyone taking a turn stirring. This should be a lot of fun.
So stop by the deli this week ask for a taste, buy a quart to take home and feed the family, or try one of our bowls of pasta. We will be offering with your hot bowl of Rustichella pasta and sauce your choice of Piave or Parmiginao-Reggiano just to fuel the feud between the two. Quarts of pasta will be pre-pack in the case for your convenience. Or even better buy some and freeze it back home and have home made sauce the rest of the winter.
Thanks,
Chef Rodger
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