Our summer container gardening yielded a terrific, ongoing crop of Martino’s Roma tomatoes. Somehow, they survived both the cool temperatures of Venice Beach in early June and the spike in hot temperatures (for us) over the last month. It wasn’t all winning, but we were able to take our Roma tomatoes from the vine to the kitchen, and we wanted to share.
The Roma Tomatoes on the Vine
If you remember our summer container gardening report, the Roma tomatoes were beginning to ripen in mid-June. We started them indoors in seed trays, and they took at least 80 days to begin to set fruit.
Happily, we have not yet (knock wood) faced the dreaded hornworms. We have had to do a fair amount of trimming back of the leaves to ensure good air flow through the plant. We have also been assiduously pulling the tomatoes off the vines once they are very nearly or just ripened to discourage birds and other critters from nibbling away.
Roma Storage Failure
We had a plan to make creamy tomato sauce with our Roma tomatoes as soon as we had two pounds of ripened tomatoes. That didn’t entirely work. In fact, I just made the sauce today, and we lost at least a half-pound, if not slightly more, to mold and rot. Sigh. That’s on us. Had we cooked with them even a couple of weeks ago, we would not have faced quite that much of a loss. Lessons learned there.
Sauce from Roma Tomatoes
On the upside, we still had enough fully ripened Roma tomatoes to make a deliciously creamy sauce. It’s not a lot, but enough for a couple of meals. For our first attempt, we used the recipe developed by Brooklyn Farm Girl. Obviously, we had to scale down a bit, as she was working with five pounds of tomatoes. Still, the recipe made for the perfect creamy, yet light sauce to put on the Capellini pasta I had for lunch today.
Bonus tip: an immersion blender seriously speeds up the sauce-making process.
Andy likes things spicier, so he’s likely to add more garlic and other seasonings when he dives in for dinner. It’s an easy recipe to follow, very quick to make (maybe 30 minutes total), and creates a fresh base that can be seasoned to taste without stress. Also, I can’t eat onions anymore (ugh), so I was thrilled to find a sauce recipe that made my Roma tomatoes delicious without them.
And that is today’s report from the tomato trenches. Visit us for more info on our urban container gardening adventures and food and drink experiments.