To-may-to To-ma-to

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday! It feels like forever since I last blogged, but I have been cooking and I'm excited to share them with you!

I went to Los Angeles a few weekends ago and stocked up on some amazing cherry tomatoes and tomatoes on the vine..at the .99 Store!! The produce there is surprisingly very fresh because the produce at the SB store is always...rotten. I still had a few packages of tomatoes left to eat, but we were leaving for Thanksgiving, so I decided to make a fresh tomato sauce with them! I love making my own sauce because it's healthier, easy, and tastes great!

First I roasted onions, garlic, shallots, chili peppers and mushrooms in the oven to blend with the tomatoes.

Ingredients for tomato sauce!

Then I decided to blister the tomatoes open in a pan before blending them. After they were blistered, I didn't take too many photos because I was in the zone of getting it done and..forgot about photos.

Tomatoes in the process of blistering. The glare is from the condensation on the tomatoes.

Once the aromatics were roasted and the tomatoes were blistered, I blended them together and added ground black pepper, garlic powder, cayenne, red chili flakes, cilantro, and parsley. In the pan, I sauteed more garlic, onion, and shallots and let the sauce simmer and I added mushrooms and balsamic vinegar. Because I didn't add salt, I decided to add a little bit of nuoc mum (Vietnamese fish sauce) to give it a salty/umami flavor. The tomatoes were acidic, so I balanced the sauce out by adding some hoisin sauce.

Simmering sauce! 

We ate the sauce the next day over medium sized shells and it was SO good. The hoisin gave it a nice sweetness, but you were still able to taste the acidity and freshness of the tomatoes. The cilantro I blended in also really stood out.

The mushrooms added a meatiness to the dish.

I love the deep red color!

I had leftover sauce and I froze it until the next time I make pasta or pizza! I really want to grow my own tomato garden, but sadly, I have no space nor that much sunlight near me. Hoping to get more tomatoes to make sauce! If you haven't tried making your own sauce, I highly recommend it. Way better than the bright red sauce that comes in jars..although, I do use that too.

                                                      Until Next Time!
                                                          CheFelicia