Nostalgia Trip

One of my favorite, favorite things to do lately is make tomato sauce. I didn’t even know how until recently - I was dependent on jarred sauce from the grocery store, doctored into acceptability (more pepper, more basil, more garlic, cook it down a little, splash of red wine…). Which is just about as time consuming as making it myself, and affords far fewer opportunities for PETA-approved violence.

There are people who say you don’t need to peel the tomatoes. Those people either say they don’t mind tomato skins in their sauce, or (mostly) that they are running the results through a blender or food mill. I mind tomato skins, and I also mind washing extra dishes. We peel our tomatoes in this house. Most people will suggest that you do this by scalding them in boiling water, but a few whisper, darkly, that this dilutes the tomato flavor, which we cannot have. The fun way to peel a tomato is to stick a toasting fork in it and hold it over a gas flame until it cries for mercy.

I am so not kidding about the crying for mercy. The tomatoes pop and squeak, and their skins blister, and then you can put that tomato down, flip it over, stick the fork in the other side and repeat the process. Chortle as evilly as you like. If you have an electric range, or a lot of tomatoes, you can stick them under the broiler for ten to fifteen minutes (flip them over halfway through). It’s just a lot less fun.

You let the blistered, burn-victim tomatoes cool for a while, and then you rip their skins off. Slice them in half horizontally (from guggle to zatch, not pole to pole), hold them over a bowl, and stick your fingers into their innards. They will suck at your hand like the starving undead while you pull the seeds out. Then hold the fleshy, quivering, gutted remains of the tomato over a skillet and crush them in your fist. When you’re done dismembering the main ingredient, stop and mop up a little. Compose yourself.

Add a splash of olive oil, some crushed red pepper, minced garlic and dried basil to the skillet and turn the heat on. (We disdain measurements here at Nostalgia Trip, mostly because we think most of our measuring cups are at the bottom of the toybox. When you get bored mincing, that’s enough garlic. Shake pepper into the palm of your hand to avoid accidental overdoses making their way to the pot. Taste results and adjust seasonings as desired.) If you think the tomatoes should be in smaller pieces, smoosh at them with a wooden spoon. Add salt, pepper and sugar to taste (be careful with the sugar, especially at the height of tomato season). Cook until you have something that looks like it would hold up well to the use you want to put it to.

I usually use this sauce for pizza. You will not get a Ragu-consistency sauce out of this, but it still goes fine on spaghetti.

This is one of the very few photos of my kitchen you will ever see here, and this is why. This is the counter to the right of my kitchen sink, partway through the process of trying Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for watermelon lemonade. The stuff on the cutting board is spilled watermelon puree. In the background is an empty olive oil container, a rice cooker, infinite amounts of tea, and a bottle of elderberry wine given to us by a neighbor as a “thank you” for shoveling his walk. (I have expanded considerable thought on the question and cannot tell whether he wants us to shovel his walk again. On the one hand, it was a gift. On the other hand, it is elderberry wine. You kill aspidistras with it.) You can’t tell from this picture, but the countertop laminate is separating from the countertop. They were never happy together, and they are bitterly working out the terms of a divorce.

Check out the recipe link - it’s gorgeous. Notice how tidy the whole process appears, with the clean granite counters, the total lack of anything extraneous to the process of making watermelon lemonade. Deb over at Smitten Kitchen does not appear to have been reminded, on this project, of what happens when you overfill the bowl of a food processor with an ingredient which you then convert into a liquid. Even the juiced lemons look appealing.

I have no idea how anyone ever does this. I have no end of respect for it. I have never been able to do it myself. Maybe once.

It was pretty good lemonade. The single batch is ridiculously small - multiply by eight.