Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and vegan
Summer is pre-eminently the season of full-bodied, ripe, juicy and tasty tomatoes, which are abundant and cheaply available, even in our own country. However, we tend to consume tomatoes all year round because they are simply one of the most popular vegetables, both in the healthier kitchen and – yes – the fast food kitchen. But winter tomatoes are invariably imported from abroad. This brings along a higher ecological footprint, and also, they are much less tasty. That’s why many people process freshly harvested tomatoes in the summer to keep them for use in the cold season.
Tomato sauce
There are all kinds of options:
- Preparing classic cooked tomato sauce and freezing it
- Making and freezing raw tomato sauce
- Sundrying or dehydrating the tomatoes
Each of the above operations consumes energy for cooking, drying and freezing them (sometimes for months). Drying in the sun is not really an option in our climate. And cooking the tomatoes obviously reduces their nutritional value.
We’re lucky that we have a natural and energy-efficient way of processing. This actually means that we can keep the tomato sauce at room temperature afterwards, for up to a year. We can do that by fermenting the tomatoes with some sea salt, garlic and herbs.
What you need for a jar of 1 kg or two jars of 500 gr:
-
- 1 kg tomatoes, without skin and seeds
- 10 gr sea salt
- 2 garlic cloves
- a bunch of fresh basil or fresh flat parsley
- a 1 l glass jar or two 500 ml jars
.
Step by step
- Peel the tomatoes. The easiest way to do this is by immersing them briefly in boiling water. The skin bursts and when you remove the tomatoes from the water and rinse them off, you can peel off the skin very easily.
- Remove the seeds from the tomatoes and cut them into small pieces.
- Finely chop the garlic cloves as well as the fresh garden herbs.
- Mix everything in a bowl with the sea salt.
- Pour everything into the jars and seal them hermetically.
- Leave to ferment for about 15 days in total. The first 5 to 7 days at summer room temperature, then slightly cooler (between 15 to 20 °C).
The pickled and fermented tomato sauce keeps for a full year without extra cooling.
They make up a wonderful side dish or add-on to rice, pasta or can be used on pizza.