Daring Cooks: Food Preservation – Canning & Freezing

The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

John at Eat4Fun hosted this month’s Daring Cooks’ challenge, and it was super inspirational to see all of the canning and freezing going on in the kitchens of all the other Daring Cooks!  For all of the recipes, including Apple Butter, Oven Roasted Tomatoes, and “Bruschetta in a Jar”, as well as preserving techniques check out the PDF.  (Holy cow!  What an extensive explanation of canning and freezing!)

I followed John’s advice for freezing the perfect-when-seasonal tomatoes that I am so in love with right now, and headed up to a farmers’ market (Rock Garden Farms in Caledon) to pick up a giant haul of roma tomatoes.

While I was there, I was overwhelmed by this year’s squash bounty:

Have you ever seen “ghost pumpkins”?

But back to the tomato madness: I oven roasted the tomatoes, and took the idea one step further to make yesterday’s Roasted Garlicky Tomato Basil Sauce, and I am so glad I did. What gorgeous depth of flavour! There is now a set of jars full of tomato sauce in the freezer that is bound to perk up my winter pastas!  I can’t wait to relive summer all over again.

But I have to say, I could barely stop eating the Roasted Roma Tomatoes just as they were.  They have so much flavour, that they were great to eat on their own.  And I think they’d make a divine pasta just as they are, tossed with a bit of olive oil and fresh basil.

Next year, I am definitely picking up twice the tomatoes so I can freeze a batch of roasted tomatoes, and a batch of them turned into sauce.  Oh yeah.

If you want to roast your own deliciousness, here is the recipe.  And I warn you, whatever you make won’t be enough!

Roasted Roma Tomatoes

• 40 roma tomatoes, sliced in half lengthwise
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 1 red onion, finely chopped
• 8 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
• 20 leaves of basil
• salt & pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 350F.

Place tomatoes on 2 baking sheets lined with aluminum foil, cut side up.

Drizzle olive oil over top of the tomatoes, and sprinkle with onion, garlic, basil, and salt & pepper.

Bake at 350F for 2 hours.  Then turn up the oven to 400F and roast for another 30 minutes, until the tomatoes are slightly caramelized.

You can now freeze the tomatoes as they are, in mason jars or doubled-up freezer bags (to avoid freezer burn).  You can also turn them into Roasted Garlicky Tomato Basil Sauce. Enjoy with pasta, oh yes.