My next adventures in the kitchen that were noteworthy include: Pasta sauce from scratch and my absolute favorite french dressing
Basically all I did was put some oil in the pot, sautee garlic and onion and when done threw in a whole carrot cut into decent sized chunks and one stalk of celery. I let the veggies steam and sweat while I washed my tomatoes. Next I turned the heat pretty hot. I would core a tomato, squish it in my hand so all the juices and some seeds went into pot and not on my cutting board. then I would cut it into big but manageable chunks. I would do about 2 tomatoes at a time because if you core all of your tomatoes and then squish them all and then try to cut them all up the sauce will never reduce properly. Once you damage some of the tomato skins certain enzymes are activated and you only have about 2-4 mins to cut open the tomato and get it really hot in order to deactivate those enzymes which if activated will NOT let you reduce to a thick pasta sauce and instead you'll just make tomato juice! ha OK back to my story. So once all the tomatoes were squished (which is my favorite part) and cut, I put in some red cooking wine, sea salt and peppercorns, some bay leaves, and any italian herbs I had (oregano, parsley, a little thyme, a little sugar (a little white and brown sugar) to help cut the acidity of the tomatoes and the last of my garlic powder, and then I put the lid on and let cook for awhile. Once everything was breaking down nicely I brought out my fancy immersion blender and let it turn everything into a nice paste! It is so orange because I put a whole carrot in to also help with acidity but who knew one carrot to 15 tomatoes would still turn the sauce orange! Either way It turned out delicious. When I started with the chunks of tomatoes my pot was full, then you can see the line in the picture of where the sauce was when I first blended it and then you can also see how much it reduced after cooking for about 3 hours on the lowest setting with the lid off of course because in order to reduce you need water to evaporate! The sauce turned out super thick and honestly the BEST pasta sauce I have ever had. We ate some that night for dinner, Brian added goat cheese on top and I added cilantro! :) SO good! I had enough sauce left to fill an old sauce jar to the top and put in the fridge for the next two nights meals and also enough to fill another old sauce jar a little more than half way to freeze. It only lasted in the freezer about a week and a half because it was soo good that we wanted to eat it again so soon! :) I think the real key in the sauce is the cooking wine, but that may just be chefs opinion. ;) ALSO a huge note: a lot of people have recipes for sauce making online that include blanching the tomatoes in order to skin them easier because if you do it right the skins pretty much fall right off and some people also go through the trouble of deseeding the tomatoes. I OBVIOUSLY did not do either of those things and the taste was not hindered one bit. I do understand if people do NOT have an immersion blender or do NOT want to put hot liquid into a normal blender then skinning the tomatoes will give you the best texture of sauce, but I also cooked for 3-4 hours when a lot of people try to make great pasta sauce in 40mins. This can only be achieved with the skins off I feel. Next some people think the seeds make a sauce bitter, but with all the other flavorings I added plus with the carrot and sugar cutting acidity, I am sure they probably tackled the bitterness from the seeds also! :) Either way I encourage everyone to try and make homemade pasta sauce! Especially now that it is summer for people in the states because tomatoes are growing like crazy and have the best flavor right now so if you cook up as big of batches as you can, you can freeze it and have summer fresh pasta sauce all winter long! :)
Immersion blender to the rescue again! My absolute favorite salad dressing! I love it so much so that I will NOT ever buy store bought dressing again. All it is: Ketchup (I found some that does not contain High fructose corn syrup, no preservatives, and no artificial dyes or flavorings), water, white vinegar (LOVE IT), lots of cloves of garlic, oil, salt, pepper and some dried onion flakes. OH and sugar! :) I have some raw sugar and it gave this batch something a little different but I like it. Raw sugar is a cool tasty mix between brown sugar and normal white sugar that everyone has. I now actually have all three types of sugar in my cupboard (brian prefers the white sugar on his corn flakes from the bulk bins but will put raw in everything else like tea or coffee haha).
Well, thats about all I have that is food related! Sorry if this bores some people, but anyone who knew me when I was little (like my mommy) is AMAZED at how much I love to cook now since she used to have to beg me to come help her in the kitchen! It was probably more to do with the fact that I never wanted to help clean up and so I figured if I didn't help with the mess then I wouldn't have to help with the clean up ;)
School starts on Monday, July 29th and I am sorry I didn't post more over break but I didn't do to many fun things. I basically dog walked and try to sleep as much as possible! Also the internet at my apartment has been screwy and I have had a killer head cold my entire last week of break! However, on the bright side I much rather be sick over break than during the semester!
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