Marinara sauce and meatballs

I wanted to stock the freezer when my husband was out of town recently, so I decided to make tomato sauce and meatballs along with batches of breakfast burritos and veggie burgers. I have never had much luck making homemade sauce, and this is the happiest I’ve been with a batch. Same thing with the meatballs. They’ve never had enough flavor for me, but I love these. I guess the trick is the half pork, half beef mixture, and the use of bread soaked in milk instead of breadcrumbs. I used the leanest beef and pork I could find and they still came out great. Next time I’d probably add some tomato paste to get the sauce a little thicker, but otherwise I followed the recipe as found here. Click for the meatballs.

And the fabulous result:

Working with fresh tomatoes

We picked up some sausage last week from the farmer who runs our CSA, and I was actually stumped as to how to use it. Lately we’ve been eating a lot of vegetarian meals, picking things based on the vegetables we get for the week. So I hunted through the sausage recipes on epicurious.com and found a wonderful pasta dish. (I really should cut back on the pasta. Maybe next week.) It called for a 28 oz. can of pureed tomatoes, but I wanted to use fresh instead. Preparing them seemed like it would be a lot of work, but it really wasn’t so bad. Since it was a learning experience for me, I’m sharing a little primer here.

First, start a large pot of boiling water. Also, fill a bowl with cold water and throw in some ice cubes. Cut out the stem of four tomatoes (for the recipe below) and slice off the bottom. Then score each with a knife, top to bottom, and around the sides.

Then, drop the tomatoes into the boiling water and let them sit for about 60 seconds. With a slotted spoon, remove them, and plunge them into the bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. You will see the skins have loosened.

Once cool, peel off the skin, slice each tomato into fourths and scoop out all the seeds. I just stuck my fingers into the crevices and pulled them out. I felt like I was back in biology class dissecting a pig.

Since I wanted them pureed, I stuck them in the food processor and ran it until no big chunks were left. And that was it. Once we get more tomatoes in, I hope to make a big batch of sauce this way. That’s one way to prolong the summer!

Now, where those tomatoes ended up:

Click below for the recipe