Harvest tomato sauce

This is an Annabel Langbein recipe which I altered slightly. I had a bowl full of tomatoes to use when Elliot and I returned from holiday. They were ripening quickly and there are only so many pieces of toast covered in tomatoes and tomato salads you can have (cherry tomatoes with heaps of basil and feta with black pepper and lime is rather scrumptious though!)

Ingredients:

• 1.5kg tomatoes - cored and cut into wedges (I also used some cherry and just cut the little core out)
• 2 red capsicums - deseeded and cut into eighths 
• 1 large onion - cut into thin wedges
• 4 cloves of garlic - peeled
• 1 tsp chopped rosemary leaves
• 1 small chilli (I used 3 large ones and would probably add another 2 next time)
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 2 tb sugar
• 2 tb extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• ground black pepper

I also added:

• about a tsp dried oregano
• 1 tb ish of smoked paprika
• couple of tsp of chilli powder (from chillies we grew, dried and ground)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 160°C. 
• Prepare tomatoes, capsicum and onion and place them in a large roasting dish on baking paper (they need to be in a single layer so they caramelise and not stew - so you might have to use two dishes, which I did).
• Add garlic, rosemary, chilli.
• In a bowl mix tomato paste, sugar, olive oil, salt and pepper, oregano, smoked paprika and chilli powder.
• Spoon mixture over veges and stir to coat (only way to do this is with your hands).
• Bake for about two hours or until veges caramelise and shrivel.
• Allow veges to cool and then puree in a processor.
• Sauce will keep in the fridge for a week of you can boil it and pour into a sterilised jar.

The sauce was very yummy. You could taste the herbs and it had a good level of heat with the chillies and the chilli powder. The smoked paprika was an inspired addition if I do say so myself.

The one thing I would say was that the sauce was a bit thick. Next time I would probably add some stock when processing it, just to make it a bit easier to put through a pasta or something. Probably is a perfect consistency for a pizza sauce.

I used it to make a chicken vege tomato bake thing - just cos I wanted to use what I had. All I did was fry off the veges (anything you have in the fridge - I used zucchini, mushrooms, corn, beans, red onion and broccoli).

Then brown the chicken - two breasts cut into bit sized pieces.

Put chicken and veges into an oven proof dish, spoon the tomato sauce over and then add a breadcrumb topping which I just made from a mix of breadcrumbs (I had some homemade stuff in the freezer and added some panko to it), zest of one lemon, ground black pepper, rosemary and thyme and then I crumbled some feta into it.

Bake at 200°C for 20-25 minutes until breadcrumb top is golden. 

Serve with a dollop of lite sour cream on top and a side salad if ya wanna.

Yum (and a good way to get lots of veges into a meal if you're 5+ a day has been a bit lacking!)

Pre-cooking (was eaten too quickly to snap the finished product!)