Hello my friends,
I’m back in the work-saddle after over a week away in South Carolina. The intention wasn’t to completely fall out of the work-saddle, but as fate would have it, my laptop broke just a day into our southern adventure and I’m too old for typing out my thoughts on a phone. Whose fingers work like that anyway?!
I came back from our two-weddings-and-a-funeral whirlwind of a trip eager to write, edit photographs, and pick tomatoes. I’ll share more on the trip later… but first, let’s get back to the entire point. TOMATOES.
I hadn’t even unpacked my suitcase before I ventured out into the vastly overgrown and under-cared-for gardens of late August. The dill is long gone to seed, the cabbages have been given over to the moths, and the watermelon trellis that I held such high hopes for is all but laying flat on the ground. Still, I marched on to the tomatoes. The reward for my twenty minutes of picking was two lugs of San Marzano-style tomatoes and thus I spent my first day home canning 26 additional quarts of tomato passata by myself.
Demanding, repetitive tasks are good for settling the soul.
Before we left on our trip, I made the first batch of passata for the season. For me, there’s no tomato product that we put up in the summer that’s as valuable. Passata is not cooked down deep and rich like other sauces – it’s bright red and vibrant. It tastes as close to a perfect summer tomato as you can get. This is the sauce that I use on pasta, on pizza, in soups, and over roasts. It’s my one-size-fits-all tomato preserve. And it’s not hard to make either, so long as you’re willing to wash the dishes.
The steps for perfect passata are simple:
- Cut the tomatoes and cook them for 25 minutes, until solids and liquids seperate
- Run the tomatoes through some sort of colander, food mill, or saucer
- Can
The first Italian to teach me this sauce was from Bologna. She was taught to make it plain-Jane, like I do in the video. It’s tradition in certain families to add cloves of garlic, stems of basil, even a roasted red pepper or two. As was the case with the second Italian to teach me this sauce, who was from Sicily. She added one onion to her pot of tomatoes and pinch of sugar. One of my very favorite parts about not being Italian is that I don’t have anyone yelling at me telling me I have to do it this way or that. There’s no Nonna waiting to hit the back of my hand for making the sauce wrong. There is no ‘wrong’ in my kitchen. There’s just a beautiful mixture of what I’ve learned, what I grow, and what I like to eat.
I’ve never been one to follow rules anyway.
I hope you enjoy our time together making this beautiful tomato passata. This is now a tradition in my home that I look forward to each season.
Enjoy!
Shaye
Naomi
Hi Shaye,
I’ve been watching your YT channel for a few years now. I have learned so much from you, especially about creating a slow, beautiful, intentional lifestyle and valuing homemaking. Thanks for sharing what you’re learning and inspiring me to grow. I have one of your photos from the homemaker series on my wall between my kitchen and dining room and hope to get more. It’s a great reminder to me that there is beauty and great value in serving my family and that my unseen labors bring glory to God. I was wondering, what food mill are you using in this video? I love that it’s hand crank and that it attached to the counter!
Grateful,
Naomi
Court
I love this story! I made tomato passata for the first time, this year, with tomatoes graciously gifted to us from our pastor and his wife. They were beautiful Roma’s and made a delicious sauce. I have learned, though, that I would have preferred a much simpler sauce, like the one you have made. I will definitely be trying this method next time. Thank you for sharing!