When we think of tomato sauce, we often think of something that must simmer on the stove all afternoon to reach its pinnacle of flavor. Images of Italian grandmothers doting on Sunday gravy dance in our heads.
And though some tomato sauces need all that time and attention, many don’t. And the sauces that are gloriously short and sweet are the ones to make right now, when fresh homegrown tomatoes are in abundance.
As most Southerners know from eating tomato sandwiches, a great tomato needs very little help.
Today’s recipes demonstrate how to make three different sauces that transform fresh tomatoes with speed and ease.
These sauces are paired with seafood, but if you find a sauce you like, you’ll find other ways to use it.
Fresh tomatoes make a great topping for broiled fish. When the tomatoes are at their best, they don’t need to be pre-cooked. In other words, the only cooking of the tomatoes occurs under the broiler where they are quickly transformed into a makeshift sauce at the same time that the fish cooks.
In this kind of sauce, or salsa, the tomatoes can be seasoned any number of ways. The recipe below uses a combination of garlic, herbs and capers — mix that all together with tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper, and you have a topping that can make almost anything taste good.
You might find yourself wanting to serve this mixture raw as a salad or on bruschetta. It’s pretty versatile.
Fresh tomatoes also are a natural partner with pasta and cheese. Some people like to toss raw tomatoes with hot pasta and cheese and call it dinner — and that makes a nice vegetarian meal this time of year.
In the recipe below, the tomatoes are cooked just a bit, then tossed with pasta, feta, shrimp and zucchini for an all-in-one meal. But you could substitute, say, chicken and broccoli.
Finally, we have a tomato-cumin cream sauce. It’s still a quick sauce, but it offers a more assertive flavor. In other words, this sauce might overwhelm a plain white fish, such as flounder. But it’s great with scallops, oysters or salmon — or chicken or even pork tenderloin.
With seafood, the key is keeping the potent cumin restrained — so be sure to taste the sauce before adding more seasoning.
Hopefully, these sauces will inspire some creative variations.
Here are a couple of tips to help you make quick sauces of your own:
- Cherry or grape, or even Roma, tomatoes are good to use in cases when you are trying to avoid having excess moisture — i.e. tomato juice.
- Using a large, shallow pan, such as a 12-inch skillet, helps to cook off any excess moisture in the tomatoes, and is key to thickening sauces in a jiffy.
- If you have exceptionally juicy or seedy varieties of tomatoes, it helps to take one extra step: Cut them in half, then gently squeeze them over the sink to remove excess juice and seeds.
- If a fresh tomato sauce tastes a little acidic or rough around the edges, whisk in a little butter to smooth it out.
August 18, 2020 at 10:00PM
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Summer Sauce: Homegrown tomatoes dress up fresh seafood with speed and ease - Winston-Salem Journal
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