urban odds & ends

I'm sorry for neglecting my little babble space and you :) So much to work on and still recovering from a little illness...

For now I just want to share a tomato ketchup recipe. It's high season for tomatoes, I bought 7kg last weekend - some to boil down and freeze for tomato sauce and some to try the ketchup recipe I glanced at so often while leafing through my cookbooks. It needs a little prep time but it's definitely worth it. And I thinks it's pretty darn cool to serve homemade ketchup to my friends, announcing that I made it myself and hear them say how kick-ass this is ;)


Homemade Tomato Ketchup makes about 500mL
adapted from Jamie At Home (p 314)

500g plum tomatoes, halved
500g canned plum tomatoes, chopped
200g red wine vinegar
70g brown sugar
1 large red onion, roughly chopped (mine from the farmers market were HUGE!)
1/2 fennel bulb, roughly chopped
1 stick of celery, roughly chopped
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, sliced
2 gloves garlic, sliced
1 fresh red chilli, finely chopped
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked and stalks chopped
2 cloves
salt & pepper
olive oil

Heat a large pot oder saucepan over medium heat, add the oil, all the vegetables and the ginger, garlic, chilli, cloves, coriander seeds and basil stalks. Cook for around 15 minutes until the vegetables are soft. This smells really really good by the way :) Now add all the tomatoes and 350mL water. Bring to boil and simmer until the sauce has reduced by half. Add the basil leaves and puree with a hand blender, then strain it through a sieve twice. Grab yourself a fresh pan or the cleaned old one and add the sauce, the sugar and the vinegar and heat over medium high heat. Let the sauce reduce until you reached your preferred consistency for tomato ketchup. Season to taste with salt and pepper and fill while still hot in sterilized bottles. It should keep for six months.


Enjoy! :)

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