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So we have more tomatoes than we know what to do with. Weve eaten them with most meals for the last month, made gallons of Tomato Frito (Puree) and still have left overs. Those remaining are getting very soft and ripe. We need to do something quick! So Richard decided to make his own derivative to Heinz Tomato Sauce. David and Aspen gave us their receipe which is here for you all to try. Last night we had egg, chips and beans so that we could use the source and I have to say it is very close to the Hienz tomato sauce and we ate lots of it. Thanks to Aspen for letting us reproduce her recipe here.
- 2 kg very ripe tomatoes, chopped and put in a non-aluminium pan (aluminium leaches into food and with an acid ‘fruit’ like this you are likely to get double doses … not good news, as it is a toxic heavy metal)
- 3 teaspoons of whole allspice (not sure you will get it here so try a combination of spices you like)
- 2 tablespoons whole mustard seed
- Tie both the above spices into a small cloth, so that you can hang it into the ketchup to give flavour, rather than a chewy product! Cook up with the tomatoes until thickened and reduced, about 30 mins
- I full cup of sugar, 3 tablespoons fresh basil - finely chopped, 1 tablespoons fresh oregano, 1 tablespoon thyme (if you have an English thyme that is great, but if it’s the local wild thyme, reduce the quantity), 2 cups of cider vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper.
- Add all the above to the tomatoes and simmer until it reches the consistency you like. I would keep tasting it as you add the ingredients, so you get a product you will enjoy. If you have any Worcestershire sauce, you could add that. Remove the bag of whole spices, and put into sterilised ‘bottles’
- Sterilisation - boil the bottles in water for 10 mins … I use the small juice bottles that have a lid that will seal again. Line the bottles up on a wooden surface to ensure that there is no possibility of cracking, and ladle in the sauce. Seal straight away … as they cool you can sometimes here the lids ‘popping’. If you press the lids when cool, you will know those that have succeeded. Any that haven’t you can keep in the fridge, although with that much vinegar in them, they are unlikely to go off.
We were given some millet seeds some time ago by our friends David and Aspen. Not really knowing what we were doing we did the sensible thing, shoved them in a free part of the “campo” and made sure they were regularly watered. Now they have grown strong and healthy. We have harvested them today as they are showing some signs of bird attack, buggies love this stuff. We seperated the seed from the kernals and used a fan to seperate the chaff from the seeds and now we have lots of clean seed. It seems you treat it like rice, 40 mins of boiling and you have a fluffy grain that is the most nutritional grain about or you can use it for thickening stews etc.
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