I wish!
No, I am going to resort to a heavy cast iron gas jet that should be able to cope with the weight of a boiler full on bottles when I process my passata.
With the abundant harvest upon me and no working kitchen it was time to rethink how I am going to process my tomato sauce, passata and pickles etc. Luckily I have been house sitting for my daughter while they are in the USA so I made a batch of tomato sauce there, using the now loved Grandmas’s best tomato sauce recipe. I tend to drop back the amount of sugar as we don’t have a sweet tooth and it suits us well. I had a few issues last year with the seals on the Grolsch bottles so I have hedged my bets and done a mix of both Grolsch and crown seal bottles.
Looking good!
Passata
Last year I made approximately 300 bottles of pure passata. This is really only a tomato puree that can be used in a multitude of recipes. Italian, Indian, middle eastern and everything in between. I used to make large bottles in my Fowlers outfit but since the kids have home left we don’t need the volume we did, so for the last couple of years I have been preserving my passata sauce in recycled stubbies and my favourite, 500ml cider bottles. This has proven to be a great thing as I can offer a couple of bottles to friends and not stress about having them return precious bottles. Take a few when we go camping and rest assured there are always stubbies available for restocking! I love this process, we haven’t bought tomato puree for yonks and I intend to keep it that way. Anyway, back to the point of the post.
Today I picked about 7 kilo of San Marzano which I will turn into passata and 4 kilo of Gross lisse which I can’t wait to have on my toast in the morning, sliced a nice little grind of black pepper and M mm. I had hoped to do it today but it is too hot and windy so maybe tomorrow evening.
A big thank you to Liz at Suburban Tomato for posting her Pickled Bread and Butter Cucumber Recipe. I tried this last night and although quite sweet the flavour is great and they have a little crunch even after this short time.
Around The Mulberry Tree 
I made sauce this weekend too. I’ve done stubbies of passata for the last few years but I picked up some nice Fowlers kit on eBay so I thought i’d give that a try this year. Hope the sugar in the cucumbers mellows suffficiently for your palate.
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