Fire Roasted Tomato Puree'

Fire roasted might be a bit of an over statement. You don't absolutely have to have fire for this one, but it helps. Like a number of other recipes you'll find floating around PwF I may meander off into rambling diatribes detailing different routes that can be taken during a recipe to illustrate the simplicity of making vastly different items from very similar processes. This is also a prelude to the post "The Unified Salsa Theory" (Coming Soontm). At it's most basic (gee, I say that a lot don't I), we're tossing cored tomatoes with a bit of oil and a bit of kosher salt and broiling (yes, there's an "r" there) them until they're somewhat blackened and syrupy. Of course, sensibly, this won't take long at all if you using cherry or grape tomatoes 15-30 minutes, but Romas or plumb tomatoes take a bit longer at roughly 40-60 minutes, and good sized slicers or beefsteaks could take as much as 90-120 minutes. Regardless, leave them all alone for the first 20 minutes then check 'em every 10-15 minutes turning the pan as needed, but leaving the tomatoes themselves undisturbed. What you're looking for is about the top 20% of the tomato to be charred. Feel free to drain off any excess juice. I'll often reduce it in a pot and add it back in. Mashed, chopped, or ground these guys are a great base for anything from a Tex-Mex salsa, to tandoori tikka masala, to an Italian pomodoro rustico (throw some browned ground beef or sausage in that and y'all can call it marinara).

Now, more refined schools of thought will recommend concasse'(kawn-ka-SAY), which is French meaning to crush or grind, but tomato concasse' is more of a process than simply crushing or grinding fresh raw tomato. Concasse' is a way to really get to the meat of the fruit, so to speak. The seeds and skins of the tomato can render unwanted flavors and textures. Tomato concasse' leaves us with a product like seedless, skinless, chopped, canned tomatoes, but with less juice and a more concentrated pulp. The preparation for this recipe utilizes the concasse' process.

Fire Roasted Tomato Puree'

Stuff you'll need:
Your most voluminous soup kettle. Hopefully, 12qt or so, otherwise, blanch in batches. In a perfect world this pot has a perforated insert like a colander. If you don't have an insert you'll need a large long cooking spoon or tongs to quickly and safely retrieve the tomatoes from the boiling water.
A bag of ice. Yes, like 7# or so.
A CLEAN kitchen sink filled with the bag of ice and tap water.
A colander inside a mixing bowl
(Stay with me here, it's not as complicated as it sounds.)
A SHARP paring knife and cutting board
5-7# of good ripe hand sized slicer or beefsteak style tomatoes, cored
1/4c Anointing Oil
2 tbls kosher salt (and 1/4c more for your boiling water)
A large non-metallic casserole dish
Food Processor or patience and knife skills



How to do it:
Fill your pot half way with water and set on a stove-top eye running high. Add kosher salt. Allow time for it to come to a rolling boil. Placing a lid atop will hasten this process. In the meantime, using the paring knife, score (this does NOT mean deep cuts, simply enough to break the skin) an "X" across the bottom center (on the opposite side from where the core was removed) of all your tomatoes. 5-6 at a time place them in the boiling water for 15-30 seconds or until the peels begin to pull back from along the lines of the "X". Remove them immediately to you ice water sink, and repeat the process until all tomatoes have been transferred to the ice bath. Remove them to the colander inside the mixing bowl to drain and begin by peeling all the skins which should now be fairly easy remove. Once they've all been skinned, cut them in half, NOT from tip to core, but equatorially, separating tip and core. Once you've cut them, holding a half in a gentle yet firm grip, delicately squeeze out the seeds and discard.

Now, were you to stop here and roughly chop them, Chef would be happy with your tomato concasse', but we are going to press on. Preheat your broiler. Rinse out that bowl that had the colander in it and toss all of your skinned and seeded halves, the anointing oil, and the 2 tablespoons of kosher salt together and layer them all snugly into the large casserole dish (unless you need more than one dish), and slide that baby into your broiler. Check it in about 20 minutes and every 10 minutes thereafter until a layer or char has almost covered the entire dish. Remove from the broiler and allow to cool. At this point you could literally hand crush all of this and it'd be just fine, but if you're still looking for a pulpier puree' place the colander in the sink and dump the casserole into the colander. Let gravity do its thing for a bit and then throw those tomatoes into the food processor and give it a good spin. Viola'! Fire roasted tomato puree.