Recipe: Roma Tomato Sauce

A friend of ours gave us a bunch of tomatoes and stuff in exchange for some rosehips.  I made this.  It's a counterpart to the Beefsteak Tomato Sauce.  Usually I make sphaghetti sauce with both kinds of tomatoes, but it's convenient to have the solo versions just in case you wind up with mass quantities of one or the other.

Ingredients:
8 lbs. Roma tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 red onion
1/2 bell pepper
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon rubbed sage
2 teaspoons basil flakes
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons sweet marjoram
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon coarse Australian pink salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic paste
12 oz. tomato paste
3/4 cup brown sugar

Directions:

Dice the Roma tomatoes and put them in a large bowl.  Pour 1/4 cup olive oil into a large crock pot.  Add the diced tomatoes.  Turn crock pot on Low and cover it.

Peel and dice the onion.  Remove seeds and ribs from half a bell pepper and dice the pepper.  Add the diced onion and diced pepper to the crock pot.  Stir. 

Cook on Low for 3-4 hours until tomatoes soften.

In a small bowl, combine 1 teaspoon dried thyme, 1 teaspoon rubbed sage, 2 teaspoons basil flakes, 2 teaspoons dried oregano, and 2 teaspoons sweet marjoram.  Mix together, then add to the crock pot and stir. 

Add 1 bay leaf, 1 teaspoon coarse Australian pink salt, and 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper to the crock pot.  Stir.  Add 1/2 teaspoon garlic paste and stir.

Continue cooking for another hour or two until the sauce begins to thicken.

Stir and taste the sauce.  Add 12 oz. tomato paste.  Stir until thoroughly blended.  Taste again.  The spaghetti sauce will probably be sour.  Add about 3/4 cup brown sugar (more or less to taste) and stir.  Allow to cook for another hour or so, stirring and tasting more frequently.  Fine-tune the flavors if needed. 

Remove bay leaf.  Serve fresh, or pour into containers and freeze.

Notes:

Roma tomatoes are intended for making sauces, so they cook down nicely.  Any red sauce-type tomato should work in this recipe, but Roma is the most common.

I typically use full-flavor olive oil (often imported) for cooking.  If you don’t care for strong olive oil, use a bland variety.

When dicing tomatoes for spaghetti sauce, make the pieces slightly larger than you want.  They’ll cook down some.  This recipe makes a thick, chunky sauce.

If you don’t have dried herbs, you can substitute fresh leaves.  Put in the same amount and taste, but you'll probably need about twice as much.

Use plain tomato paste if possible, to avoid conflicting spices.  I used a can of Great Value (“Ingredients: tomato pulp.”) here.

Australian pink salt is a gourmet salt with a mild mineral flavor, not as strong as Hawaiian red salt.  It goes well with tomatoes and other sauces.  If you don’t have it, use sea salt or table salt.  If using fine salt, use about half as much, then taste.

This sauce is more susceptible to overcooking than some other spaghetti sauces I have made, probably because it's made entirely with sauce tomatoes and extra paste.  It is unlikely to need skimming to remove excess juices.  Take care during the last few hours as it thickens.