Last week I visited Matarazzo Farm in North Caldwell. I brought home about 25 pounds of tomatoes, half Roma, and half Beefsteak. Not a single tomato met supermarket standards of visual perfection, yet all were perfectly suited for the sauce I created with Cooking with Friends‘ Alison Bermack.
A Montclair mom committed to serving healthy fare to her family, Alison grew up spending a lot of time in the kitchen with her father. There, she learned family recipes, cooking skills and appreciation for communal cooking.
Taking that love for communal cooking one step further sparked the creation for Cooking with Friends. Tomatoes also played a part. A friend told Alison she had overabundance of garden tomatoes. Alison offered her family recipe for tomato sauce and the two began transforming the tomatoes into sauce, all the while sharing stories, laughing, and giving intermittent tastes to their children.
Alison soon began cooking with men and women all over Montclair, hosting food swaps and improvisational cooking dates. This led to the formation of Cooking with Friends LLC in 2006.
Cooking with Friends has thrived in Montclair and developed a sister network in Denver, run by Alison’s best friend from high school, Shannon Henry Kleiber. Together, Alison and Shannon publish monthly Cooking With Friends e-newsletters; they’re also on Facebook and Twitter.
Alison and I spent a morning turning my Matarazzo tomatoes into sauce. Want to see how we did it? Watch the video:

Why not get a friend and put your ugly tomatoes to good use? Alison shared her recipe with us. Here it is:

Farm Fresh Tomato Sauce
Makes approximately 7 cups
You can either use your hands and get really messy for a chunky sauce or use a tomato press and stay a bit cleaner for a smooth sauce. Either way you’ll want to remove most of the seeds and all of the skin from the tomatoes. You can double the recipe for a larger batch of this simply delicious sauce. Make a bunch now and keep in the freezer for the cooler months when farm fresh tomatoes aren’t available.
1/8 cup extra-virgin olive oil
10 large garlic cloves, chopped
14 large farm fresh tomatoes (approximately 6 ½ pounds), blanched, cooled and skins removed
1 ½ tablespoons white sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional for a hint of spice)
1 cup packed garden basil washed, stemmed, and chopped into strips
First you’ll want to blanch the tomatoes. To do this, bring a large pot of water to a boil. With a sharp knife, cut an “x” in the non stem end of each tomato. Place 6 tomatoes in the boiling water and cook for three minutes. Remove and cool. Repeat with the remaining tomatoes.
Once cooled, prepare the tomatoes by removing all of the skins and the seeds. If you are using your hands, chop the tomato flesh roughly into chunks with a paring knife and place into a bowl. Press what’s left on the cutting board (the juice, skins and seeds) through a fine mesh sieve into the bowl with the tomatoes, getting as much of the sauce from the tomato as possible. Set aside.
Heat the olive oil in a 5-quart pot or Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant and golden, no more than 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes and juice gradually to the pot and bring it to a simmer. Stir in the sugar, salt, red pepper (if using). Add the basil and stir.
Reduce the heat to a medium low setting and cook about 2 hours uncovered, stirring occasionally. If after 2 hours the sauce looks thin increase the heat to medium, and cook it down for a bit. Turn the heat off and let the sauce cool to room temperature and divide into plastic containers or freezer bags.

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