kateq's Reviews
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You Say Tomato
By Joanne Weir
Broadway - 1998
Making Tomato Paste : page 17
I ended up with truly delicious tomato paste--but not without a fair amount of tweaking of the recipe. First, what is a "case" of tomatoes? I had a huge box of farm tomatoes which I peeled and cored. I pureed them in the blender and my first batch (12 cups of puree) I started as directed. I quickly realized that if I kept the heat low, it would be days, not hours, before the mixture thickened. I raised the heat to medium/medium high, gave it a stir periodically and when it was quite thick, I spread it out on a foil covered, rimmed cookie sheet and put it in the oven. While that batch "baked" I pureed another 8 cups or so of tomatoes, brought it to a rolling boil, lowered the heat a bit and let it reduce--this took all told not quite 2 hours. By then, the mixture in the oven was really thick and lovely. I put the second batch in the oven and spread the first batch out to cool. I then packed it into small ice cube trays (to end up with about a tablespoon sized cube from one tray and teaspoon sized cubes from another). When all was done, I ended up about 24 ounces of really delicious tomato paste. It may sound like a lot of effort, but it really wasn't. Once I got the hang of it, it went very quickly. And the resulting tomato paste is sweet and without the sort of metallic, overly strong flavor of the tinned stuff and much fresher tasting than the stuff that comes in the tube. And because the farm markets sell these big boxes of "seconds" at bargain prices (and lots of my seconds could have been sold as 'firsts'), it's a remarkably cost effective process.
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