Cut tomatoes in half, sprinkle with salt and place the tomatoes
face down in a colander for half an hour or more. Now, gently
squeeze out of the tomatoes as many seeds as you can, and then
place the tomatoes in a large pan. Cover and simmer gently for a
few minutes (5 to 10). DON'T STIR! Drain away the yellow "juice",
because it is very sour. At this point, we use a special utensil
to separate the pulp from the skin.
Bring the pulp to the boil and pour it into glass jars while
boiling - proceed carefully, to prevent jars from cracking, and
fill up one jar at a time (the pan should stay on the stove,
simmering gently, all the time). As an optional extra, you can add
a few leaves of basil in each jar, before filling the jar with
sauce.
Cover each jar with its lid as soon as it's full (you'll have to
act quickly, as in less than a minute the jar can get to a too
high temp for you to touch it!). Place jars in a large cardboard
box, wrapping each jar in rags (preferably woolen). Store the jars
close together in the box and let them stand overnight (24 hours
at least). Don't be surprised if you find that the jars, when you
open the box after 24 hours, are still hot: this is the best
sterilizing method I know!
This is the way we make our tomato sauce for "winter storage". It
keeps for at least one year. You can use this basic sauce as a
base for any kind of spaghetti sauce. As it has a very natural
tomato flavour, it's also perfect for stews, soups, pizza, and all
sorts of other tomato based preparations.
