Whoof, we’ve been at it! We’ll share with you one of our passion projects for the season. It’s not easy preservation, but we’ve put up 8 pints of marinara sauce!
Earlier this season, we shared with you that we weren’t sure what our second major tomato harvest was going to be. The one rule, for us, was that we had to use our food mill. We wanted more practice. But, there’s also the fact that we grew some awesome Genuwine tomato genetics, offering us plentiful F1’s with straight up Italian tomato goodness!
Most probably don’t appreciate what it takes to make a proper marinara sauce. We started with 18 pounds of tomatoes, cooking them down for a few hours to get to a basic tomato sauce. We then milled those sauced tomatoes, removing seeds and skins. From there, we further cooked down the sauce for half a day. It’s darn near a full day affair, for just 8 pints! But, it is absolutely delicious!
The origins of marinara are a bit interesting. Marinara was likely first crafted in the 16th century, shortly after Spaniards brought tomatoes back to Europe in the 1500’s. First crafted in either Naples or Sicily, the etymology of the sauce is based on the word marina. Despite having no obvious connection to the sea, and rarely being used with seafood, the Italian word marinara basically translates to “of the sailor.” The sauce is often called alla marinara, essentially meaning “sailor’s style.”
Though the exact origin of marinara isn’t fully known, folktales indicate the sauce may have been made aboard ships during the the 1600’s to 1700’s. Other tales indicate the wive’s of sailors may have started making the marinara sauce when their ships returned to the harbor, as a hearty and flavorful welcome home.
There are many styles of marinara. Our preference leans towards the classic style, comprised of tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, basil and oregano. Other variations do exist, sometimes using olives, capers and anchovies. Regardless, it’s a flexible sauce that can be used on pastas, meats, pizza or even just as a dipping sauce.
Our outdoor preservation area is really coming in clutch these days! Despite some dreary wet days here, it was nice to do a very long cook like this outdoors without heating up our home significantly. We definitely are doing things Alaskan style now, having a little fire going made things even cozier with the cool temperatures!
We’re looking forward to throwing down with this carefully crafted sauce this winter! It’s nice that we’ve got a fairly decent array of sauces going into the winter months, we’ve got many days of hearty and good garden eating ahead of us!
