Wild Sauce

No rules

Issue 54: From Sara Kate

As I type out the first words of this piece, I am already self-conscious of the story I’m about to tell, acutely aware of the rise in popularity around both the value of “ugly” produce, and also the “oh screw the rules” approach to cooking. So what I’m about to say isn’t earth-shaking. But it is important. 

I have had a vegetable garden, in one form or another, for the last twenty years. As with a child, my relationship to it changes from year to year. It deepens, of course, and my affection grows. I also find that what it asks of me is different each season. Unlike a child, there have been years where it is not a top priority for me. This was one of those years. 

I haven’t been upstate to my house where the garden is for weeks, and with a massive drought in the middle of this summer, plus my attention being pulled in a bunch of other directions, I let her slip. Sunday night I rolled in, and without even unpacking the car, wandered down to the garden to survey the abandonment and found tons of very ugly, but very available tomatoes. 

In the past, if I planned it right, I started making sauce this time of year; ceremonially skinning and seeding the tomatoes, and of course only using the “sauce” tomatoes. Once I just roasted them skin-on and then passed them through a food mill. Still following the rules… but it felt slightly wild, a bit off-road. As for the non-sauce varieties, I made beautiful magazine-ready salads from the Chocolate Cherry and Sungolds, and impressive sandwiches from the giant striped heirlooms. I had it under control. I stayed in the proper lanes. 

Last night, in the rain to boot, with very little energy, I stretched out my shirt and gathered every ripe or ripe-ish tomato—cherry, paste, Roma, striped, heirloom—some with massive blemishes, some already fallen down to the soil, rejected even by their own mothers. I collected every one but the most profoundly past-prime. (See photo below right for example of my low bar; don’t worry, I didn’t mix that into my brew.)

I snapped off their stems, gouged out any egregiously rotten spots, and roughly chopped the bigger fruits down into smaller pieces. I threw on some olive oil and salt, and roasted them—three half sheet-pans worth—for an hour or so at 300ºF, the house filling with that sun-dried tomato smell reminiscent of the late 80s (anyone remember that?) They cooled in the oven and the next morning I dumped them into my food processor and whizzed them into… something.

It’s plainness suddenly didn’t feel right, so before ladling it into freezer bags, I added a big wad of chopped up basil—stems and all—and a heavy shower of ground black pepper. It came to four and a half pounds of something that smelled great, looked tasty and held some promise to get me through a few bleak winter days, be it on pasta, pizza, or maybe even shoveled in with a spoon. But what was it? 

Sauce, or paste? Not sure. 

Wild, off-road, no rules? Yes. 

And yet honoring the ugliness and forsaken parts of the garden and maybe even myself? For sure.

But is there a recipe? No. 

This week my invitation to you is to not “follow” a recipe. It’s actually to unfollow. Break the rules. Get it done. Save the ugly fruits, literally and metaphorically. Make yourself something to enjoy now, and maybe something to save for the dark season ahead. Maybe it’s tomato sauce, maybe it’s pesto, maybe it’s stock. Be wild with it. No rules. Except to nourish yourself and to welcome in the rejected parts.