Yellow Tomato Coulis

Okay, I lied. I decided to write a post tonight about some yellow tomatoes I had piling up. Here's how it started....

Our tenants moved out last Friday, and the first thing I did as soon as they gave me the keys and pulled out of the back lane was to raid their vegetable garden. They left loads of carrots (made a yummy shredded carrot salad today), and about 60 or more tomatoes, most of them yellow. I don't mind yellow tomatoes in a salad or a tart, but really, what else does one do with yellow tomatoes? I don't think sauce would taste the same if it was yellow. But, something had to be done, a few of them were starting to get mouldy, and there's not much I hate more than watching a tomato from my garden go into the compost bin. Of all the vegetables in the garden, I think of tomatoes as my babies. Maybe because I start them from seed every spring, putting them outside in the warm sun during the day and bringing them inside to bed every evening; seeing them grow from skinny little sprouts, to tiny little plants with a few leaves and little soft hairs on their stems; planting them into the earth where they have to fend for themselves and where they grow big and lush with thick woody stalks and pretty yellow flowers promising beautiful, shiny fruit; catching a glimpse of one of those little flowers growing a small green globe.  Yes, tomatoes are definitely my babies of the garden. So, something needed to be done with these yellow babies, and the only thing I could thing of was coulis.

Here's how I did it:

Cut a cross in the bottom of each tomato, piercing the skin, but not cutting deep.

Drop the tomatoes into boiling water for about 30 seconds, then remove with a slotted spoon and when they are cool enough to handle, peel the skin off.

At this point seed the tomatoes and remove the hard bit where the stem was. 

Drop the flesh into a blender and whizz until liquid.

If you want a nice tomato juice, there you have it. You can also use this to dip good, crusty baguette which has been cut into long fingers, rubbed with garlic, toasted and drizzled with good olive oil and coarse sea salt. This is a Catalunyan treat called Pa Amb Tomaquet and is worth trying for it's simplicity and shocking burst of flavours.

Happy coulis making!