Fresh Tomato Sauce

A trip to my aunt's house in the country left me with a bag FULL of fresh from the garden tomatoes! I love getting fresh locally grown produce, especially from my own family. The only downside is that I really don't like raw tomatoes. So I thought what better way to use such a large amount of perfectly ripe tomatoes than to try my hand (for the FIRST time) at a batch of home made sauce. I don't have an Italian grandmother who passed down a secret recipe to me (im Irish after all!) so I totally wung it (past tense of to wing it?) Here is my recipe/method:

~Wash all of your tomatoes, and then remove the little core at the top, and cut a shallow "x" across the bottom. (As a note, I think I had around 4lb of tomatoes if you are wondering about quantity. It was enough to fill (to the brim) my little 4qt dutch oven)
~In a boiling pot of water blanch your tomatoes for a few minutes.
~Transfer the tomatoes to a bowl of ice water (now since you cut the bottoms of the tomatoes the skins will already be ready to fall off, but I still did the ice bath so I didn't burn my fingers!) I did the blanching and cooling in batches because well, that was a lot of tomatoes!

~ Peel off the skins and crush the tomatoes with your hands right into the pot you will be simmering in (again I used a 4qt dutch oven) It WILL be messy! haha I also added some chopped onion and minced garlic to the pot at the start to cook down with the sauce.
~Now starts the waiting game... You want to simmer until it reduces down to a thickness that you like for your sauce. I don't like chunky tomato sauce so I took my immersion blender to the tomato mush to even out the texture and let it simmer for about 3 hours

~Seasoning. I always start with salt and pepper and also added some cayenne pepper, which was really potent so I also added a little vinegar and a small palmfull of raw sugar to back off the heat. Then about a tbsp of italian seasoning to top it off.

And there you have some delicious home made sauce! I really hope that you all enjoy this, and that there aren't some seasoned sauce makers out there looking at my sauce thinking "Oi what is she doing!?" Keep your eyes peeled for some more posts about what to do with this delicious spicy sauce! As always, happy eating.