Tomato sauce

As I believe I mentioned, I made the tomato sauce again, but this time I followed the recipe to the letter. When I took it out last night, it was more green than red, but rather than tossing it, I put it away, and tried to think what to do with it. Then, when I looked over the polenta bake recipe, I saw it called for spaghetti sauce, so I thought, bingo, this is what I’ll use it for.

It didn’t look quite as bad as it had last night, when it had been rather green, Now, it had take on a more tomato color, and smelled fine, so I decided to use it. Not all of it, just a cups worth, which was what was called for. I was gong to try to follow the recipe.

cooked polenta

The other bit that called for something already made was a package of prepared polenta. Well, I had the grits to make polenta, so just deiced to do that. Polenta isn’t that hard to make. You basically put 3 cups of water to one cup of grits, and cook it over the stove, letting it absorb the water. Once it was done, the recipe said it had to be fried. I should probably have done this the way they asked, but I am stubborn, so just took my griddle, and fried it with that. The recipe called for it to be deep fried, but I didn’t think that was necessary. Perhaps it would have made for a crisper base, and perhaps I’ll do that next time, but this time I did not.

Casserole

The rest of what I had to do was fairly straight forward. I had to chop 3 carrots, 1 large zucchini, 1 large yellow squash, 1 red onion, 1 red bell pepper.   I didn’t have the pepper, nor did I have the squash, so I used the summer squashes I had, and a yellow rather than a red onion, and threw the whole thing into the frying pan to saute. The recipe said to saute for about 5 minutes before putting int he sauce, but I let it go about 10. Then I mixed the sauce in, and lined the bottom of the baking dish with my fried polenta, which wasn’t as crispy as I’m sure it was supposed to be. Once the veggies had cooked a bit more, I poured it into the dish, and sprinkled 1/2 cup for veggie rennet Parmesan cheese that I had just shredded up. Then, I popped the whole thing in the oven for 30 minutes at 350F.

The polenta was a little underdone, but the cheese and veggies and sauce were quite good, so I may make this again, and perhaps follow the recipe for what to do with the polenta a little more closely.

I paused on that thought, and she had the same thought at the same time. “We need to make that from scratch too.” she said.

So, where to start. I found a good gluten-free recipe for the crust, and then we started talking about what you put on a pizza.

Tomato sauce came up, along with cheese. The cheese, I am not ready to make yet. I am only just getting the hang of making yogurt, of which I need to make more of, by the way, but the tomato sauce, I knew I could make. The first thing I needed to do was to find a recipe for stewing tomatoes, since that is one of the main ingredients in the sauce. I have fond memories of made from scratch tomato sausce, that would take several hours to make. It was so good, and my mother very rarely had the time. It was a recipe from my paternal grandmother, and I don’t think she ever wrote it down, and it was such a pain for my mother to do, that we only had it a few times, but oh, was it good.

I went to my Italian recipe book, but all it said was to open a can of stewed tomatoes, as did most of the recipes in most of the books I had. Next, I hit the internet, and after much searching found a crock-pot version of the sauce. It was in about.com, and here it is, which what we changed:

• 6 to 8 ripe tomatoes (we did 7)
• 2 tablespoons margarine (we used butter)
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced (well, I sliced it, not sure how thin it was)
• 3/4 cup chopped celery (didn’t have, so left out)
• 1/2 cup chopped green pepper (had a red one, so chopped that up)
• 3 tablespoons of sugar, more or less (so I did about 3 tablespoons of sugar, raw sugar)
• 1 small bay leaf (bay leaves were old, so added two)
• 1 teaspoon of salt (sprinkled a pinch)
• 1/8 teaspoon of pepper (ground a few turns)

Tomatoes in Crock pot

The recipe said to core the tomatoes, place in boiling water, for 20 seconds then in ice water to get the peel off. We decided we didn’t mind the peel, so skipped that step.  After that, it said to put everything in the crock pot and cook for 8 hours, and that is what it is doing right now. It smells so good, no exactly the way I remember it smelling, but good, none the less. Hopefully this part will not fail, and we can move on from there to the next step, the pizza dough, which we shall make tomorrow.