Buongiorno! It’s that time of year again… Just. Truth be told, Tomato Day this year only happened because I’m notoriously bad at reading and responding to messages. Life had spun out of control and it was suddenly the end of March with no sauce to be seen, when I received a message from my brother Adam about Tomato Day. I had assumed from the general radio silence that we’d all decided to give it a miss, but there he was asking if it was happening. So I reluctantly spun up some energy and spent the day clearing the garage, unpacking the sauce equipment, and badgering the family into discrete tomato-related tasks.
My uncle was immediately and unstoppably up for the challenge, as the original tomato man, and had a guy lined up by the end of the day with probably the last Romas in Australia. My mum grabbed some regular tomatoes and came straight around from work so that we could use them to clean out the machine, sent my dad out to buy kilos of salt and then pressure clean the driveway, and later spent an unexpected two and a half hours looking for basil. My cousin made plans for an early start with baby in tow, roping in her mum, and squeezing it in before an afternoon commitment. And my startled father-in-law, by chance visiting from Sydney, found himself swept up in the unstoppable momentum of Tomato Day 2023. At which point my brother finished work, checked his messages, and explained that he was talking about Tomato Day 2024. By this point though, everyone was too excited and committed to the whole thing to back out, so poor Adam found himself unwittingly self-nominated for a 2.5 hour drive to get here before breakfast the next day. And of course his car was fated to break down on the way. Nonetheless, with about 24 hours’ notice, Tomato Day was on for another year!
You may remember that two years ago my cousin and I restarted Tomato Day after almost 20 years. Life’s been tough since then, and we missed it altogether last year, but we’re back now with extra hands (the first time we’ve had the whole family together for it since I was a kid) and two extra babies (although our new one was technically stowed away in Rachel’s tummy in 2021). If you missed it, you can check out the full blog post here: Homemade Tomato Passata | Passata di Pomodoro Fatta in Casa. It explains a lot about the meaning of Tomato Day for us, and the history behind it. I’ll try not to repeat myself too much this year, so have a read if you’re interested in what’s behind this big, messy day.
To the sauce. We were feeling confident this year, or at least the elders were feeling particularly weary, so with a whole heap of extra help we made the start a little later. 6am and the coffee was brewing, the garage rollers were up, and our fine spread of concrete driveway was ready for tomatoes.
Everyone makes their sauce a little differently, but ours is basically bottled raw, and then boiled for a few hours. After washing and sorting the tomatoes, the main event for the day begins: the coring and deseeding. This is my favourite part. In fact I think it’s the part that holds families together.
We get out the milk crates and the knives, and we sit around tending to that beautifully simple, repetitive task while we catch up, reminisce, laugh, and miss a few people who have disappeared over the years. The sauce is the goal, but those moments spent elbow-to-elbow are what we treasure, and I don’t think that any of us would care if every last drop of passata was lost.
Once the watery insides are out, with a hand-crush to help them along, the tomatoes are heavily salted (it’s a ‘visual’ measure, but end-of-operation calculations suggest about 1 tbsp per kilogram of tomatoes) and then layered in clean bedsheets. These are then suspended and left for a while, allowing the water to drip out. They’re then gathered up and wrung out tightly, before being fed into the machine.
During the first pass, the pulp is gathered up and later fed back through as many times as the machine (and our patience at unclogging it) will allow. My uncle tells me that the old hand crank machine, with an entirely different puréeing mechanism, would handle 4-5 passes, but our little current machine is good for about 2.5 (mixing some pulp in with fresh tomatoes to help it through). Still, it produced a nice consistency and concentration, with about 1.6kg of tomatoes to a bottle.
While that’s happening, and the tubs are filling with fresh passata, the bottles and jars are sterilised. We do this with a bottlebrush and detergent handwash, before drying them in a warm oven.
Then a few basil leaves are dropped into each, and they’re filled and capped before they cool.
We then stack them up in our giant pots, layered between hessian sacks and towels to stop them rattling against each other while they boil. At this scale it takes about an hour to gently reach a boil.
By then it’s lunch time, so we cook up a light sugo with a generous slosh of our fresh passata. Of course we have pasta too (our family’s signature ravioli), made the day before.
Then we turn off the heat go to bed, and let everything cool in place overnight. The next day we unload the bottles, drain the pots, and admire our tomatoey handiwork.
Despite the exhaustion, it’s sad to think that another year has to pass before we’ll be elbow deep in tomatoes again, sipping endless espresso and snacking on chilled prickly pears. But whenever one of us plucks a new bottle out to cook with, we’ll be taken straight back to that time spent sitting around together on milk crates.
About a week after Tomato Day, as I was tucking him into bed at night, little Al said to me: “Daddy, for me, Tomato Day is even better than Christmases and birthdays.” He makes me a proud dad. I couldn’t agree more.
Happy Sunday,
Al, Al, and El.
Equipment
- Large tubs, solid
- Large tubs, perforated
- Large cheesecloths (alternatively, cotton bed sheets)
- Bottle washing and sterilising equipment (alternatively, dishwasher and/or oven)
- Tomato sauce purée machine
- Bottle filling tub or large funnel, with scooping jug
- Dark brown beer bottles (if using 750ml bottles, then approximately 1 bottle per kilogram of unprocessed tomatoes)
- Bottle caps, 26mm crown seals
- Bottle capping machine
- Large stockpots or metal drums, sufficient to hold all bottles (as an example, a 170 litre or 60cmx60cm pot will comfortably hold 40 x 750ml bottles)
- 4 ring gas burners with 9kg LPG bottles, 1 each per pot or drum (a full 9kg LPG bottle on a 4-ring burner should burn for around 9 hours)
- Hessian sacks or thick towels, for layering in between bottles
Ingredients
- Tomatoes approximately 1kg to make 500-750ml sauce
- Salt approximately 1 generous tbsp per 1kg of tomatoes
- Basil enough for 1 large leaf in every bottle
Instructions
- Wash the tomatoes, ideally letting them drain in perforated tubs. Wash the basil.
- Remove any bad bits from the tomatoes, and then cut open to remove the watery cores.
- Stretch cheesecloths across the tops of large perforated tubs, and then layer the tomatoes, sprinkling with salt as you go. Leave for 2-3 hours, before bundling up in the cheesecloths and wringing out firmly to remove any water that has not already drained.
- Process the tomatoes using the purée machine, passing them through 5-6 times. Give the resulting purée a stir to ensure consistency, and add more salt (generously) to taste.
- Wash the bottles with hot, soapy water, before drying them in a 140 degree Celsius oven for 15-20 minutes. Sterilise the caps by sitting them in boiled water while you do this. Alternatively, for wider necked bottles or jars, you can use a dishwasher on its hottest setting.
- Drop a large leaf of basil into each bottle, and then fill using a filling tub or funnel; be sure to leave 3-4cm empty in the bottle necks for the sauce to expand when cooked. Cap firmly.
- Set the pots on their burners (but do not turn on yet), and then layer the bottles in tightly using the hessian or towels to prevent bottles touching. This will stop them knocking together and shattering as they heat.
- Fill pots with water to submerge all bottles, and then ignite burners and bring the water to a gentle boil. This may take up to 2 hours. Allow to cook for a further 4 hours, checking regularly to ensure that the boil remains low.
- Allow pots to cool completely overnight before removing bottles. Store in a cool, dark location.
Reading about your Tomato Day tradition brought a smile to my face! It’s heartwarming to see how your family comes together to carry on this special tradition, even with some funny mishaps.
Thank you (and I’m sorry about this ridiculously late reply)! I’m so glad you enjoyed reading about our little tradition. It feels like so much work in the lead-up, but then flies by too fast!
What a delightful read! Your Tomato Day experience sounds like a true labor of love. I can imagine the excitement and flurry of activities as the family prepares for this annual tradition. The process of coring and deseeding the tomatoes while catching up and reminiscing sounds like a beautiful way to strengthen family bonds.
Thank you for such lovely feedback (and sorry it’s taken me so long to reply to you). It definitely is hard work, but we’re still enjoying the passata! And like you say, it really is more about that family time than anything else anyway. I honestly don’t think any of us would have cared (excessively) if the passata itself had failed!