Roasted Garlic and Red Pepper Pasta Sauce

I don't think I'm cut out for canning. It sounds like it has all of the things I love: delicious things, fiddly precise instructions, pots that sound like types of light water nuclear reactors, SCIENCE! But this is the sort of thing that my inner computer scientist ruins. Inner computer scientist starts trying to find shortcuts or "better" ways to do stuff when tasks are repetitive and boring. Canning is kind of like remedial chemistry lab, except instead of causing a professor to wonder how someone who made it through three years of physics labs without eating a disk of thorium or staring into the lasers could screw up so thoroughly, the CDC sighs and adds a footnote to a report on food borne illnesses. And everyone gets botulism.

If I've learned anything from watching the Cooking Channel (the Food Network's dumping ground for pretentious or Canadian food shows) it's that there are a bunch of dirty hipsters shoving all sorts of food into jars in dingy apartments across New York and Seattle while charging some serious cash for the experience. If these dudes can manage to not kill people cooking with their vintage-stained stoves and ironic dirty beards, I am probably fine.

There's been a bunch of unopened canning stuff (pot, jars, lids, etc) in my parents' basement for a couple of years. The backyard produces just enough produce to have slightly too much to eat fresh but never enough ripe at the same time for canning. And the squirrels appear to have a taste for heirloom tomatoes. The canning book I have is full of pretty pictures of tomato sauces. I didn't think I'd be able to find twelve pounds of ripe tomatoes for a reasonable price.

I was correct. I found thirty pounds of tomatoes for a reasonable price at the Jeffersontown Farmers Market. One of the stalls had boxes of tomatoes marked "Canning tomatoes" and I was sold. Aside from some extremely minor blossom end rot scarring (which is why I assume they were being sold this cheaply), the tomatoes were beautiful. No smashed, bruised, rotten, or green things hiding further in the box. The tomatoes themselves were not very seedy or watery. They seemed to be between an actual sauce tomato, like a roma tomato, and a slicing tomato. My plans were two batches of roasted garlic and red pepper pasta sauce and a batch of tomato basil jam.

The real test was whether I'd be able to peel, chop, and process thirty pounds of tomatoes before they went bad or my attention wandered too far. Success. I ended up with ten and a half quarts of pasta sauce and five 8 oz jelly jars of jam. Because I can't ever leave anything alone, I added some carrots and onion and fennel seed to the sauce; the sorts of things that generally make pasta sauce delicious. I'm not sure how the jam turned out because sweet tomato things aren't my style. Worst case scenario, I mail it to people too shy to tell me it sucks. And hope they don't get botulism.

Roasted Garlic and Red Pepper Pasta Sauce

adapted from Better Homes and Gardens, changes are in brackets in case you are less interested in food poisoning

for six pints of sauce

12 pounds of ripe tomatoes

6 [or 4] sweet red bell peppers

[2 carrots]

[1 sweet onion]

6 heads of garlic

2 tbsp oil

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp kosher salt

3 tbsp brown sugar

[2 tbsp tomato paste]

[2 tsp fennel seeds]

[1 tbsp red pepper flakes]

2 cups (or 2/3 cup dried) basil

1 cup (or 1/3 cup dried) other herbs, such as parsley, thyme, sage, oregano

lemon juice or citric acid, 1 tbsp or 1/4 tsp per pint jar

Canning equipment: jars, lids, bands, boiling water canner, towels

1.) Weigh out 12 pounds of tomatoes. Skin the tomatoes: score the bottom of the tomatoes and blanch in boiling water for a minute or so. Plunge into cold water. The skins will come off when pulled. Seed and cut the peeled tomatoes into chunks.

Because it takes forever to peel and cut that many tomatoes, start roasting the garlic and peppers [carrots and onion too]. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Peel the paper off the garlic (but leave the cloves on the head) and cut the peppers in half, removing the seeds [quarter the carrots and onion]. Place vegetables in a roasting pan, drizzle with oil and roast for forty minutes. When the pepper skins have blackened, remove from the oven and place the pepper in a paper bag (or a foil pouch). Let rest for ten minutes and then peel the charred skin away. Cut into pieces. You can add them now to the chopped tomatoes, if you want them pureed, or you can cut them into tiny pieces and add them to the end of the cooking of the sauce, if you want them to retain their shape [same with the carrots and onions]. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of the bulbs and add to the tomatoes.

2.) Puree the tomatoes and garlic to make a sauce. I started out with a potato masher to get things going...

...and finished with an immersion blender. You can use just a masher, a food processor or blender, or a food mill. Whatever it takes to get the consistency and tomato size you want.

3.) Add the sauce flavorings. Add the vinegar, salt, sugar, [paste, fennel, red pepper], dried herbs (if you're using fresh herbs, save them for later in order to not cook them to death). Heat the sauce to boiling, reduce to a simmer, and cook for 50 minutes if you didn't already added roasted peppers and dried herbs. If you saved the peppers and/or fresh herbs, add them after 40 minutes and cook for another 10 minutes.

While the sauce is cooking, sterilize the jars, lids, funnels, and ladles.

4.) As soon as the sauce is done and the jars are sterilized, pack the jars (this is hot packing, meaning the jars and contents are hot). Place 1 tbsp of lemon juice or 1/4 tsp citric acid per pint in the bottom of each jar and fill to 1/2 inch of the top of the jars. Wipe the top clean to ensure proper seals and put the lids on, tightening the bands to finger tightness (don't try to screw the bands on like you'd expect on a jar of store bought pickles).

5.) Process the jars. Place the jars in a boiling water canner. When the water boils, time for 35 minutes if using pint or half pint jars or 40 minutes if using quart jars.

6.) Remove the jars from the canner and allow 12-24 hours to cool completely. Do not mess with the bands or poke the tops until completely cool. If after the cooling period some lids did not seal (meaning the top moves up and down when you press on it), you can try to process them one more time or put the affected jars in the fridge, to be used within a week. Properly sealed jars are good for a year, unopened.