Easy Home-Made Tomato Ketchup

I used to despair about how much tomato sauce my kids ate until I read that it contains lashings of lycopene, a powerful antioxidant (these days I squeeze it down their throats while holding their noses). I joke, of course, but we do eat an awful lot of tomatoes in this house, mainly because of my addiction to tomato soup, which still shows no signs of abating.

I bought a lovely big box of tomatoes yesterday and decided to try my hand at home-made ketchup. I approached this recipe with some trepidation, because I didn't think it would taste the same as shop sauce, but I needn't have worried: it not only tastes exactly like ketchup; it tastes better. I love a recipe that delivers on its promises, and this recipe does - in dollops. The spice combination is spot on.

It's adapted from Preserved, by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton. If you're into drying, salting, smoking, pickling and bottling, I can highly recommend this brilliant and inspiring book.

I was particularly impressed to see that the first recipe in the book is for our beloved South African delicacy biltong: 'Mention to biltong to émigré South Africans and their eyes will start to water with nostalgia,' they write. 'Dark, chewy, and frankly pretty tough, this air-dried, spiced meat is an acquired taste, but once acquired it is never forgotten. Americans already have a head start through their predilection for beef jerky, but never make the mistake of comparing the two in the presence of a South African!'


Easy Home-Made Tomato Ketchup

3 and 1/2 kg ripe, juicy tomatoes
4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 cup (250 ml) vinegar (I used half malt vinegar, and half white wine vinegar)
10 whole cloves
4 cardamom pods, lightly crushed
1/2 t (2.5 ml) white pepper
1/2 t (2.5 ml) ground black pepper
1/2 t (2.5 ml) ground mace (use nutmeg if you can't find mace)
1/2 t (2.5 ml) ground allspice
1/2 t (2.5 ml) ground cinnamon
2 t (10 ml) paprika
1/2 cup (125 ml) white sugar
2 t (10 ml) salt

Remove the stalk 'scar' from the tomatoes using a sharp knife or apple corer, but don't peel them. Cut them in quarters and feed them through the tube of a food processor fitted with a metal blade, together with the garlic. Process to a chunky mush. (If you don't have a food processor, roughly chop the tomatoes into 1-cm sized pieces). Put the cloves and cardamom pods onto a little square of muslin or cloth and tie in a bundle, like a bouquet garni. Place the bundle into a deep preserving pot or a thick-based pan and add the tomato pulp and all remaining ingredients. Mix well, bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and cook gently, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, until the mixture has reduced by a third, or is slightly thickened.

This will take about two hours. Remove the spice bag, allow the sauce to cool slightly, and then whizz to a rough purée in your food processor. Pour the purée back into the pan and bring to the boil. In the meantime, sterilise four jars (about 25o ml each) and their lids (or wide-mouthed bottles if you have them). Pour the boiling sauce into the jars, filling to within a few millimetres of the rim. Screw on the lids tightly, and tighten again after half an hour hour.

I suppose you could sieve this sauce if you wanted a really smooth ketchup.

The authors of Preserved recommend that you store the sauce for eight to ten months before you eat it, but I don't think I can wait that long. Keep in the fridge after opening.

Makes 4 jars.

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Drying parsley in your oven: not for bitter women

Parsley may be the world's most popular fresh herb, but it isn't easy to grow at home. It's fickle and fussy. It takes forever to germinate. One year, it grows in profuse green tufts, and then for the next three years it turns yellow and spindly, or, more annoying, it grows like the clappers, and then bolts, producing a flower and seed-head within four weeks of your planting it. Parsley has its good years and its bad, but mostly, in Johannesburg's climate, it has bad years.

Many years ago I was discussing the growing of parsley with my godmother, who passed on an interesting Afrikaans saying about parsley, namely 'A bitter woman can't grow parsley'. (I wish I could remember the original words - help, anyone?)

This saying sprung to mind when I noticed two weeks ago, with suprise and satisfaction, that the single flat-leaf parsley seedling I planted in my little vegetable strip is having a bumper year. It's a huge, leafy, thigh-high ball, and so pungent you can smell the parsley fragrance from a metre away. What a relief: clearly, this year, I am not a bitter woman! Hah!

Anyway, I couldn't bear to see all this leafiness and flavour go to waste (severe July frosts are on their way) so I harvested most of the bush and dried it, in three batches, in the oven. Yes, I know dried parsley isn't known to have a long shelf-life, or to retain its pungency for more more than a few months, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway.

I washed the parsley, dried it in a salad spinner, and then piled it on the middle rack of my fan-assisted oven, along with a few handfuls of celery leaves. I set the temperature to 100°C, and then turned off the heat (but left the fan on). Within 20 minutes most of the leaves were bone-dry, but still a livid green, and 30 minutes later the leaves were ready for crushing and crumbling. I ended up with about a cup-and-a-half of deeply fragrant, dark green crumbs, which I've put into a sealed container and stashed in a dark cupboard. I added a pinch of the mixture to a spag-bol sauce I made today, just before serving, and the fragrance and flavour was incredible; much more pronounced, in fact, than the flavour you normally get by adding big fresh stalks of parsley to stocks and stews. (Have you noticed how fugitive the flavour of fresh parsley is? It tastes brilliant when scattered fresh over a dish, but if you cook it for more than 30 seconds, the flavour all but vanishes.)

I'm looking forward to experimenting with my quick-dried parsley in the next few months. If it loses its zing, you will be the first to know (on tenterhooks, are you?) Print Friendly