Tomatoes: Soup, Salad, and Sauce

As I mentioned yesterday, my kitchen is overflowing with tomatoes and zucchini, given to me by neighbors whose gardens are over-producing. While I am very grateful, it requires a bit of creativity to use it all. Today, I'll be talking about what to do with all the tomatoes

My very favorite tomato dish happens to be the simplest: tomato and mozzarella salad. It's not really a salad, though. It's just tomato slices stacked with mozzarella slices and drizzled with vinaigrette. Make sure to use the best quality mozzarella you can find, because it really makes a difference here. I also like, plain sliced tomatoes with salt, garlic salt or vinaigrette.

Since I am allergic to milk now, I can no longer have the combination of tomato and mozzarella. Besides, it's not conducive to using a lot of tomatoes at once. Salsa is a good option, but I don't really like it, so I skipped over that option. I decided on pasta sauce and tomato soup.

Before you can make either of these dishes, you need to peel the tomato. It's not as difficult as it sounds. Have ready a bowl of very cold or iced water. Bring a pot of water to a boil. While you're waiting for the water to boil, make a small, shallow slit at the bottom of each tomato. Drop them in the boiling water for 1 - 2 minutes, depending on how big the tomato is. Remove them with a slotted spoon and immediately put them in the cold water. After they've cooled, the skin will just slip right off.

Place the tomatoes in a food processor. You can remove the white part where the stem attaches to the tomato if you wish. Process until you've reached the desired consistency. I like my sauce chunky, but my soup very smooth. If you have made the tomatoes smooth, strain them through a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds. If it's chunky, the seeds won't matter as much. If you're really worried about the seeds, you can remove them before placing the tomatoes in the food processor.

Here's where the differences between sauce and soup come in. Soup is simpler, so I'll start there. Pour the pureed tomatoes into a saucepan. Add basil, cream, and salt. Heat it to the desired temperature and serve. You can also pour it into freezer containers and freeze for later. It's that simple.

For pasta sauce, heat olive oil in the bottom of a skillet or Dutch oven. Add crushed or chopped garlic, and saute for a minute or two. Add your tomatoes and then add the desired seasoning. For a basic, but delicious, sauce, just use basil and a little salt and barely cook it. For a more traditional sauce, add Italian seasoning, salt, a little sugar and possibly beef bouillon and cook longer. You can also get a pizza kind of flavor by using oregano. Go gently with each addition and taste it before adding the next until you find what you like. Some seasonings, like oregano, strengthen in flavor with cooking, so it may be best to wait 5 minutes after adding a spice before taste-testing it.

Pasta sauce can also be put in freezer containers and frozen for later use. If you know how to can you can find recipes for canned tomato sauce. You can alter the spices in these, but do not alter the amounts of anything else, because you may encourage the growth of bacteria and spoilage. Pasta sauce was the first recipe in which I really experimented with seasonings and learned what spices I like. It's a perfect opportunity for you to enjoy the creative process and enjoy the food.