Salsa di pomodori piccante

Fresh, naturally grown ingredients

The tomatoes are coming in for summer from our favorite natural grower, Siembra Tres Vidas. Since I will be off the island for a week, the best way of preserving all of these fresh tomatoes is making a reference sauce for pasta. The idea for this sauce comes from Haiti, where the hot peppers 'come to visit', but do not stay.

Ingredients

• 1 kg fresh tomatoes, coarsely cubed
• 250 gm fresh onions, medium dice (5mm)
• 30 gm fresh garlic, diced
• 100 gm natural grown aji dulce (variant Cubanelle Pepper), medium dice
• OPTIONAL BUT ESSENTIAL: two (2) very fresh habañero peppers ~15 gm, deveined and seeded. Keep the habañeros in large pieces. (use gloves or get used to it--try to do the deveining under running water. Do not touch eyes after handling!)
• 75 gm virgin olive oil

• 320 cc red, substandard pineapple wine (12% alcohol, fruity)
• 10 gm salt (approximately 1% of tomato weight)
  
• 30 gm white sugar

Total weight of ingredients: 1815 gm



Procedure

A good dice of onions, garlic and aji dulce

Using a covered cazuela (terracotta cooking utensil), heat the olive oil with the habañero chiles until the chiles begin to fry. Continue to fry slowly, turning the peppers until their original orange color is browned. Do not fry too far or the result will be bitter. Remove the habañeros from the cazuela, carefully draining any oil on the habañeros back into the cazuela.

Habañeros before and after frying in virgin olive oil.
Keep the pieces big. You should recover them. Lost habañero pieces are dangerous.

What happened: Capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers, is oil soluble. Frying the peppers extracts the capsaicinoids making the olive oil (very spicy). Browning the peppers gives a caramel, complex flavor to the finished oil.

Add the onions, chopped aji dulce, and garlic, and sautee until transparent. Then add the tomatoes and 10 gm of salt. Allow the tomatoes to stew at low heat on the stovetop until they have begun to become watery. Add the wine. Place the cazuela in a convection oven at 110C (slightly above the boiling point) and allow to cook covered for 6 hours.

At the end of this cooking period, the tomatoes will have fully integrated into the sauce. There should be skins floating in the mixture

Sauteeing the onions and garlic on low heat, then add the chopped tomatoes

What happened: The low cooking temperature assures that the volatile aromas of the fresh tomatoes is not lost. Please see the Pflug papers here.

At end of first cooking

Pass the cooked sauce through a medium food mill to retain some interesting texture. Then add (as in the instructions of Marcus Gavius Apicius) oregano leaves to taste and 30 grams of sugar. Stir into the sauce. Finish by cooking covered at 80C for 4 hours.

Food Mill

The finished, earth red, concentrated sauce

If you did not add the habañeros, add freshly sliced basil at the end of the final cooking. Basil is a very delicate herb and you do not want to cook it very long.

The finished sauce is aromatic with very complex flavors on the palate. It begins with a nose of oregano, then to the tart of the tomatoes, moving lightly to sweet, and finishes with a mild, fruity heat.

Total yield after evaporation: 500gm (27.8% of original materials)