Roast Tomato Sauce

This week saw the first day of autumn, or the autumn equinox, and the traditional season for a 'harvest festival'. I therefore shouldn't be surprised that in recent weeks my focus has been on cooking up what nature (with a little help from me in some cases) has produced.

This week is no exception. I have heard that this year in the UK has been a poor year for tomatoes but a great year for figs. I beg to differ. My fig tree has produced only around 6 ripened fruit so far but my tomatoes have been brilliant. Hardly a split fruit and I'm confident that a record percentage will ripen, meaning I probably won't be making any green tomato chutney this year - a definite first.

However, this did mean that I found myself picking 2kg of ripe tomatoes in one go - probably another record. I decided to roast them to make a sauce.

I set the oven to heat up to 190C, gas mark 5, and dug out two large baking trays, which I lined with a sliced onion and 5 cloves of garlic, also sliced. I then set out to halve my 2kg tomatoes and place these on the onion and garlic, cut side up. The whole lot was sprinkled with thyme leaves, salt, pepper, a teaspoon of soft brown sugar, 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar, and 4 tablespoons of groundnut oil.

I placed them in the oven for 70 minutes, switching the trays around half-way through the cooking time.

After allowing the trays to cool slightly I tipped everything into a food processor and gave it a blitz before pressing the puree through a sieve to remove the seeds and tomato skins.

If you prefer a chunky sauce you will need to skin the tomatoes before roasting them and then just give them a brief turn in the food processor after roasting. However, my tomatoes are a small, cherry variety and the thought of skinning them all at the start was too much to contemplate. You do lose some volume of sauce when sieving it though. I ended up with 750ml of sauce, enough to serve 6 as a pasta sauce. I imagine that a skinned and un-sieved version would give you almost a litre.

All in all, a pretty easy way to deal with a glut of tomatoes, as well as store some of the taste of summer for a cold winter day, since the sauce freezes well. I placed two 250ml batches in the freezer and kept another 250ml portion in the fridge for a speedy work-day pasta supper.

Delicious!