Celebrating Summer

With the summer heat , we are celebrating the wonderful produce of the season.
The first fabulous Florentine tomatoes are ready to be made into sauce.

Although my Florentine husband, Andrea, says August is really the month for tomatoes, I can’t wait! I won’t be buying kilo’s of tomatoes to prepare for sauce until August, when the market is glutted with the sweet ripe tomatoes and the price falls, but how can one resist makings some pomorola now, and bringing summer to your plate?

Fiorentine are what they call the people from Florence. These lovely pumpkin like-tomatoes are also called Fiorentine, even when grown in Sicily! They are a fabulous, rich, meaty heirloom tomato that makes an incredibly rich sauce, called Pomarola, which every Italian Mamma makes.

This week we have made it twice in class!
No butter, no oil just tomato at it’s ripest.
Nothing tastes more like summer.

• To make your own Pomarola-
  
  Usually we cook about a kilo, 2.2 pounds of tomatoes at a time. It is really important to only use summer RIPE tomatoes. If not, off season we use canned San Marzano tomatoes, which are only picked at the height of perfection!
  
  Squeeze the tomatoes into a large pot with your hands.
  Add some torn basil leaves and a large pinch of salt.
  Cover pot and let cook over medium high heat until the tomatoes fall apart.
  Pass the tomatoes and all their liquid through a food mill ( moulix), not a food processor which would only chop the skin into the sauce.
  Keep pureeing until all that is left are the skins, rolled up, releasing all the tomato pulp.
  The food mill removes all the skin and seeds and leaves you only with the rich tomato puree’.
  
  To serve:

While you cook the pasta, heat some of the sauce in a skillet with a tablespoon of butter.
Lightly drain the pasta, and toss into the sauce, heating together to finish cooking.
Sprinkle with parmesan and serve with additional parmesan at the table.
Garnish with some fresh basil and you will taste Summer!



Mamma mia….. make this and you will make an Italian weep!