There's something about Romas

I am in love with Roma tomatoes. I am also in love with San Marzanos, but I don't think I will be planting those lovely babies again any time soon.
Romas are plentiful, delicious, easy to grow, and cheap (if you don't have a garden).
Making sauce out of these is wonderful. They are nice and paste-y so they don't require much reducing.

Here's what I do for fabulous sauce that rivals Mama Ragu's:

Wash and slice the tops off as many tomatoes as you want. Cut them in half, throw them in a big pot. Season with about 1 teaspoon Herbs de Provence, one green pepper, a quarter onion and three garlic cloves. Cover and let simmer for at least 30 minutes.

Once everything is soft, process it all through a food mill. Put it back in the pot and reduce to the consistency you like. I reduce it about 1/3rd.

Taste and tweak if necessary. You can serve this right away or can it for later use. There is nothing like fresh sauce.

Love. Roma. Tomatoes.

Brine your meat!

This isn't really a recipe...more of a suggestion. Brine. Your. Meat.

We have a wood burning grill, so brining is essential. It gives better flavor, but there is not much of a science to it. The heat fluctuates and sometimes it leads to dry meat. Brining solves that. You can brine anything! Sausages? Pork? Turkey? Chicken? Beef? Venison? Yes!!

Basic brine is a quart of water, and equal parts sugar and salt, at least 1/4 cup. Mix it together until dissolved, throw in the meat, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

You can obviously change this up. I like to use brown sugar and add cherry balsamic vinegar to pork. I add bay leaves and carrots and onion to turkey. Hot sauce to beef. Do the extras make a difference? I would like to think so.

Once done brining, rinse and pat dry the meat. Season normally and grill, broil or bake. You will never eat unbrined meat again.

Banana Jam

Jam is pretty simple. It is just sugar, water, fruit and spices of some sort. Kyle likes banana bread, but shouldn't eat it, so I thought I could make jam that tastes like banana bread!

You will need:

5 ripe bananas
Lime juice
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cup sugar
Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves...whatever you like! I just used cinnamon, about 1 Tablespoon

Chop the bananas, sprinkle with lime juice to keep them from browning too much. Boil the sugar and water, add the bananas, stirring constantly. You will want to smash the bananas as you stir. Add the brown spice(s) of your choice as you stir. This jam is done when you drag a metal spoon across the bottom of the pan and it leaves a path in the jam.

You can can this or refrigerate it. This made about 1 1/3 pints. I canned it for 10 minutes in a boiling water canner.

This is good with peanut butter. Slice a donut in half and make a sandwich with this and some peanut butter.

Roasted Roma (and San Marzano) tomatoes

These are delicious. I stumbled on this recipe last year and Oh. My. Goodness. I planted a ton of Romas this year just to make this "sauce". I decided to add San Marzano tomatoes to this recipe, but you don't have to!

I always can this recipe. I have never served it fresh. If you are going to can these lovelies, add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice before canning and 1-2 Tablespoons brown sugar BEFORE SERVING.

You will need:
As many Roma tomatoes as you like
Salt
Pepper
Diced onion (about 1/4 amount of tomatoes)
4-8 cloves of garlic
Italian seasoning

Lemon juice for canning
Brown sugar for serving

This is pretty simple! Turn on your broiler and while it is warming up, get your tomatoes ready. Slice off the top and core them. This makes it much easier to seed them later. Place the tomatoes on a sheet along with the garlic (as much as you like) and put them in the oven under the broiler. Broil until the skins are brown and bubbly.

Remove from the sheet and put tomatoes and garlic in a paper bag until they cool enough to handle. About 15 minutes.

Remove skins from tomatoes once cool. Slice and seed tomatoes. Remove garlic from papery skins. Combine all ingredients in a pan; tomatoes, onion, garlic, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning to your liking. Heat to boiling.

If you are going to can this, do it now. Add the lemon juice and process for 1 hr 25 min in a boiling water canner. To serve from canned, warm over medium heat, smush tomatoes and add at least 1 Tablespoon of brown sugar.

To serve fresh, just smush the tomatoes and add the brown sugar.

This stuff is like crack. I use it all the time. It works with beef and chicken. It is good without meat.

Try it and you will never buy canned sauce. Ever.