If your kitchen looks anything like mine these days, there are a number of tomatoes ripening on your window sill. The colder weather may have forced us to pull out our plants, but we still have LOTS of tomatoes to work with.
The other day I stopped by my friend Kristen's house, to find her drowning in a sea of canning jars and tomatoes... she had picked 90 pounds the day before! I gladly took about 6 pounds off her hands to make sauce with. Cooking with fresh tomatoes is a bit trickier than canned tomatoes because you need to skin them first. Luckily this is an easy task that involves little more than putting on a pot of boiling water.
Here are the steps:
1. Score the underside of the ripe tomato like a cross.
2. Gently drop the tomato into a pot of gently boiling water.
3. Wait about 2 minutes, or until the tomato floats to the surface.
4. Using a spider or a slotted spoon remove the tomato from the water and let cool.
5. Once cool enough to handle, use your fingers to easily slip the skin from the flesh.
6. Now the tomato is ready to be used in a sauce or canned for future use.

My next posting will be about using these tomatoes to make bolognese.