Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce

Let's talk about sauce, baby...

The warm weather we have had this summer has given us a bumper crop of tomatoes, especially cherry tomatoes. We aren't eating them as fast as they ripen, so I've been making the easiest tomato sauce even and freezing it.

I love that this sauce doesn't require any peeling or seeding of the tomatoes. Your food processor or blender will take care of all those. There is really no recipe here, but here's how I make it.

I fill a baking sheet with tomatoes, one large onion and one or two large cloves of garlic. I keep the cherry tomatoes whole, but quarter or half any larger one. The onion gets peeled and quarter. The garlic just gets peeled.

Then I drizzle everything with a generous amount of olive oil. Mix it up so everything gets coated. The whole tray goes into a preheated 350 F oven for 30 - 40 mintes.

You want everything to be soft and the onions should just be starting to turn brown. I let the tray cool a little bit and then put it into the blender, make sure to get all the juices and brown bits. A quick processing will make it completely smooth. Then I taste for seasoning. I usually add some salt, pepper, basil and oregano. A touch of balsamic or red wine vinegar is good too. One full tray makes about 3 cups of sauce.

If we are using it right away, it is usually hot enough right out of the blender. Otherwise, I freeze it in 1 cup containers.


I've been doing variations on the sauce too. Since we have a ton of peppers in the garden, I've been roasting them up too for a tomato/pepper sauce. Both sweet and hot peppers work. That sauce I only seasoned with salt and pepper. I think it'll be good in Mexican dishes.

Finally, I made a smoked version by roasting some larger tomatoes on the smoker. They get a wonderful flavor. You almost think there is a little bacon in the sauce. I mixed the smoked sauce with a little of the plain so the smokiness wouldn't be over-powering.

I'll be canning some whole tomatoes in the next couple of weeks for slow cooked sauces in the winter, but in the meantime this quick sauce is my new go-to version.

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted. © 2007-2012 Kathy Lewinski

MN State Fair 2012

It's that time of year again, Fair Time! Typically, it's the one day a year when Matt and I stuff ourselves on lots of fried foods on a stick, of course. This year, we got a little overheated and the crowds were unbelievable, so we were a little more restrained.

For breakfast, we started with the one item everyone has been raving about this year, the Walleye Roll from Giggles. Oh, we know why they are raving, this is a fabulous sandwich. It reminded us of a really good tuna salad, but with that distinctive walleye flavor.

The bread was a wonderful brioche coated with plenty of melted butter. Local sourced ingredients, a fresh presentation, nothing fried! I'd order this sandwich at a restaurant any day.

Seems like everyone else was lining up for a Pronto Pup for breakfast. Matt wanted to get one a bit later, but by then the lines were about 50 people deep. Guess these early birds knew what they were doing.

Breakfast dessert was a bag of fresh Tom Thumb mini donuts. Come on, breakfast dessert is a great idea. I think my taste for mini donuts may have been spoiled by the fabulous chai spiced ones from Chef Shack.

It was Minnesota Cooks day at the fair, so we went listened to Mike Phillips plus folks from various farms and Bethal College talk about local produce and meat. Of course, there was food. Mike cooked up a wonderful bread salad that featured his beautiful cured meats. The smell of them cooking was amazing!

We needed a little cooler at that point, so we visited favorites Spring Grove Soda.

Matt had the Black Cherry which seems to get a lot of raves. He likes it, though I find it a little cough syrup tasting. I had the limited edition Rhu-berry which was so great, not too sweet with a touch of tart from the rhubarb. Even Matt agreed it was the better soda.
We headed to the International Bizarre next to see which of the Midtown Global Markets restaurants were being featured that day. It was Pham's Deli. Their new dish was a cranberry wonton which we had read so-so reviews of, so instead we went with the chicken dumpling.

I have to say we were both really surprised with these dumplings. They were perfectly spiced and didn't even need a dipping sauce. Plus they were not greasy at all, but crispy and light.
We wanted to sit down in the shade at that point, so we went to O'Gara's to grab a shady table on their patio. We'd heard their Blarney Beans were good, so we picked up an order.

As deep fried green beans go these were pretty good. Crisp with a nice light breading. They came with a chipotle dipping sauce which could have been a touch hotter.
Then we were off to see what I was most excited about, my first state fair ribbon.

I took second place in the colorwork mittens category this year. Not too bad for my first entry ever. I'd like to enter a food category at some point too, maybe with our smokey salsa.

By then we were feeling ready for a flight of beer at Land of 10,000 Beers, the new craft beer room at the Agricultural Building. Seems like everyone else had the same idea! That place was wall to wall people trying to get a beer. Next year, I think they need a whole beer garden. With our quest for a cold one thwarted and the lines for everything else crazy long, we decided to cut our fair day a little early and head off to Bulldog in Nordeast Minneapolis to cool off. I'm a little bummed we didn't get any cheese curds, try Ole's Cannolis or the goat at Andrew Zimmern's new food truck. The nice thing about the Minnesota State Fair is there is always next year!

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted. © 2007-2012 Kathy Lewinski

Happy Birthday Julia

Today Julia Child would have been 100 years old.

Even if you don't cook, Julia is a great role model for women everywhere, the way she jumped into French cooking even though it wasn't something only men did professionally. She had a zest for living and it came through the tv screen to touch all of us who watched her show. Thanks Julia for inspiring us to cook real food!

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted. © 2007-2012 Kathy Lewinski

Drinking like the Queen

Even though we weren't having a big get together for the Olympics Opening Ceremonies this year, we still wanted a special cocktail to enjoy while watching. Well, I was watching "The Monarchy at Work" on PBS and the bartender at Buckingham Palace gave us the answer. We would drink what the Queen drinks, Dubonnet and Gin.

Now, we aren't drinking out of special engraved crystal cocktail glases, but beyond that we tried to stick to the drink as was told by said bartender.

Dubonnet and Gin

1 slice lemon
2 ice cubes
1 part English gin
2 parts Dubonnet

Remove any pits from the lemon slice (the Queen does not spit out lemon pits). Put the slice at the bottom of the glass. Top with two ice cubes (the most perfect cubes in the freezer). Add gin and Dubonnet. Mix.

Makes 1 cocktail

Dubonnet is a French aperitif (some stores keep it with the vermouth). It has an herbal flavor to it which blends well with the juniper flavor of the gin. I found it an easy drinker, but a strong little cocktail, just one went to my head. Bravo, to Betty for drinking something a little more interesting then a glass of sherry.

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted. © 2007-2012 Kathy Lewinski

Going for the Gold Ice Cream

I love the Olympics, especially the spectacle that is the opening ceremonies. Typically, I have a party where I ask people to bring food and drink from various countries. This year we are keeping things a little more low-key, but I still wanted to make something special to enjoy while watching. With the hot weather we've been having, ice cream seemed to be the way to go.

I wanted to celebrate England with this ice cream, so the base is flavored with Hobgoblin Dark English Ale and then studded with pieces of honeycomb candy (what you'd find inside a Cadbury Chunchie bar). The ice cream has a nice strong malty beer favor (with just a hint of banana from this beer). The honeycomb candy melts into sweet, golden caramel/toffee flavored bites. Together they make a winning team.

I use the ice cream base recipe from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. Jeni's is in Columbus, Ohio, but our local higher end grocery store has recently started carrying her small batch ice creams (all the pints are hand labeled in Sharpie). We fell in love with flavors like Brambleberry Crisp and Brown Butter Almond Brittle. When we saw that she had a book out on how to make her ice creams at home we grabbed it! You can get her basic ice cream base recipe on Saveur too.

Going for the Gold Ice Cream
The beer is not cooked down in this recipe, so the final ice cream does have a small alcoholic content.

Ice Cream Base:

2 c whole milk
1 1/2 T cornstarch
1 1/2 oz cream cheese
1/8 t fine salt
1 1/4 c heavy cream
2/3 c sugar
2 T light corn syrup
1/2 c Dark English Ale (a stout or porter would be good too)

Make the ice cream base:

Mix 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornstarch and set aside

Put the cream cheese and salt into a large bowl, whisk and set aside.

In a large heavy saucepan, add the remaining milk, cream, sugar and corn syrup. Bring to a rolling boil over medium-high heat. Let boil for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and whisk in the cornstarch mixture. Return to heat and bring to a boil again. Let boil whole stirring, for one minute. It should be smooth and slightly thickened.

Slowly whisk the hot mixture into the cream cheese. Stir in the ale.

Cool in the fridge overnight or put into an ice bath to chill completely.


Honeycomb Candy:
from Wikihow though I added the bits about reaching the proper candy temperature.

5 T white sugar
2 T golden syrup (I've seen some recipes that just use honey, but golden syrup is traditional in England)
2 T honey
2 t water
1 T baking soda


Make the Honeycomb:

Have you water and baking soda measured out and ready to go. Grease a baking sheet or cover the bottom with a silicone mat or parchment paper.

Put the sugar, golden syrup and honey into a heavy saucepan. Melt over medium-heat. Bring to a low boil, stirring quite often. Boil until the mixture reached the hard crack point, just above 300F. The mixture should caramelize to a slightly darker brown. Remove from the heat and add the water and baking soda. Stir in quickly. The mixture will foam up (this created the honeycomb). Pour out on to prepared baking sheet. Let cool completely. Break into small pieces, smaller than a nickel. (Don't worry if your honeycomb isn't completely crisp, mine wasn't. It'll melt in the ice cream so just needs to be stiff enough to break up.)

Freeze the Ice Cream:

Freeze the ice cream according to the directions on your ice cream maker. Package it in an air tight container, layering in pieces of honeycomb candy. Let sit in the freezer for at least a couple of hours to let the candy to soften.

Makes 1 quart

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted. © 2007-2012 Kathy Lewinski