Everyone in Salt Lake City except for me is tending a patch of tomatoes right now. We’re a city of home gardeners.
Despite Fred and Ginger’s famous dancing argument , it doesn’t really matter how you say it: Garden-ripened tomatoes are the soul of summer. No one said—sang—it better than Guy Clark so: Play this song while you make tomato sauce from your own homegrown tomatoes. Because guaranteed, if you’re growing them, you’ll have plenty—enough to make a sauce, besides all the other things Clark mentions.
I like this recipe from Windy Cedar farm because even though it takes some time to reduce the water out of the tomatoes, it’s passive time: You don’t have to stand over it. I like the condensed richness of tomato flavor, and the suggestion to freeze it in useable portions instead of steam-canning it makes it easy to use for months so you can have that fresh tomato flavor even in midwinter when fresh tomatoes are just a happy summer dream.
