New Cooking Adventure: Tomato Sauce

A few weeks ago we were given quite a good amount of tomatoes.  I love them but couldn't eat them as fast as they were given to us, so I decided that it would be a good time to try making my own homemade tomato sauce.  I would call it a success.

Here's what I used:
10 tomatoes (4 plum tomatoes, 6 vine ripe)
1 medium white union, finely chopped
5 cloves of garlic, sliced thin and chopped
1 small can of tomato paste
1/2 cup red wine (I used a Shiraz) *you don't have to add the red wine, it just adds an extra touch of yummm to the sauce
1-2 tsp. Italian Seasoning
1 tsp. Oregano
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Here's what I did:
I started by blanching my tomatoes in boiling water and placing them in an ice bath.  Blanching the tomatoes made the skins so much easier to peel off and also cooks them just a bit.  While the tomatoes were cooling off in the ice bath, I finely chopped my onion and placed them into a deep pot with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Let the onions cook until they are translucent and tender.  Next, I cut the tomatoes into quarters and de-seeded them.  Then I chopped the remaining tomato pieces into smaller cubes and placed them into a blender.  Using a strainer, I ran the remaining juice from the seed bowl into the blender to add some liquid before pureeing the tomatoes.

After the tomatoes were pureed, I added the garlic to the onions and let that cook for a few minutes.  Then I added puree mixture, red wine and tomato paste.  After everything was mixed well together I added the oregano and Italian seasoning in and let the mixture simmer for about an hour.

A picture of the end result.

I made Ziti and hand-breaded Chicken Parmesan to go with our freshly cooked homemade sauce.  Yummy.