Its late summer and the garden is full of summer fruits and of course tomatoes abound. Its time to harvest and preserve for the winter when this abundance will be missed. This recipe gives us a wonderful summer sauce that we can use for many others in the months to come. I’ve mixed the herbs, but you can of course limit to one or two of your favourites. Add pepper, salt and sugar to taste.

Process.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/Gas Mark 4.

Cut tomatoes in half and place cut side up in a single layer on your roasting pan. Scatter onions, garlic, herbs, salt, sugar, pepper and oil over the top. Roast until softened, I roasted this for about 1.5 hours, but keep an eye out to prevent burning, though I like a hint of burn.
Remove from the oven. I mixed the ingredients in a moulinex and then rubbed through a nylon sieve. Retain the “waste”, it makes a lovely spread which I love on bread for a mid-day snack, especially with a dribble of pesto flavoured olive oil on top (see our pesto recipe).

Passata “waste” is great on toast for a midday snack, more so with a drizzle of pesto infused olive oil.

Put the passata in a pan and heat before transferring to your sterilised jars.

Ensure that you have your sterilised jars ready and fill. I use a few of our vine leaves to cover the top of the sauce. I found this idea from a jam maker in Romania, apparently its because of their acidic qualities. It certainly seems to work!

Fill your jars and seal as per your preferred methods. If using screw jars remember to release the cap by a quarter of a turn, otherwise I always seem unable to open later …. Yes that’s terribly annoying.

Additional Notes.

Remember that this can be frozen if you are making large batches.