Scott VanDenPlas

I do not title this blog post lightly. I am not kidding, I have not experienced flavor like this, and will most likely be making my sauces like this from now on. I bucked the sauce making trend on this, leaving both the seeds and skins on our tomatoes. It turns out, this was a good idea. What you will need, with almost zero measurements… not because I am a dick about it, but because everything is to taste:

8-10 ripe tomatoes
Olive oil
salt
pepper
An entire head of garlic
1 onion
Fresh basil/oregano

First, cut the tomatoes in half and toss them in a bowl with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then, light up a charcoal grill, get that sucker SCREAMING hot. Roast the holy hell out of those tomatoes. You want them to get charred. Don’t worry, they are full of moisture, the skin will mostly char leaving the flesh soft and juicy. This is why it is important to leave the skin on, it holds a solid metric ton of flavor. It will look something like this:

I cooked them cut side down first so they didn’t just melt into the grill, then flipped them and roasted the skins on them. Scrapped them off, threw them into a big bowl. Simultaneously to this, Beth was slicing large slivers of garlic, dousing them in olive oil, and cooking them in a 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes. She then sauteed up a diced onion, to which we added the roasted tomatoes, the garlic/oil mixture, and the aromatics. We simmered this down, creating this:

When in doubt, use simple ingredients, grill it on charcoal.

Ok, so we went cooking crazy today, so I apologize for the crazy amount of food postings headed your way.

Two weekends ago, we went up to the belly of the beast aka Door County. Apparently we hit them right at the cherry harvest, they were everywhere. We ended up getting 2 gallon zip lock bags of sour cherries for $6, and had no idea what to do with them. The farm we bought them at recommended we look into making cherry bounce (as did my in-laws).

I had no idea what cherry bounce was, and this apparently makes me a slight traitor to my country… because in my further research, this drink is as American or probably MORE American than apple pie. Hell, even Martha Washington had her own favorite recipe:

“Extract the Juice of 20 pounds of well ripend Morrella Cherrys Add to this 10 quarts of Old French brandy and sweeten it with White Sugar to your taste—To 5 Gallons of this mixture add one ounce of Spice Such as Cinnamon, Cloves and Nutmegs of each an Equal quantity Slightly bruis’d and a pint and half of Cherry kernels that have been gently broken in a mortar—After the liquor has fermented let it Stand Close-Stoped for a month or Six weeks—then bottle it remembering to put a lump of Loaf Sugar into each bottle.”

Well, we didn’t have 20 lbs of cherries, nor the 10 quarts of cognac… but we came up with our own recipe:

2 gallon bags full of cherries
1.5 liters of vodka (Grey Goose)
1.5 liters of brandy (Christian Brothers VSOP)
4 cups sugar
4 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
2 glass jugs (thank you Carlo Rossi)

We made a simple syrup with the water and sugar, bringing the water to a low boil and disolving the sugar. We then split the cherries between the two bottles, added the syrup, added the cinnamon sticks, then poured the alcohol over the top… one bottle with the vodka, the other with the brandy. We then sealed them up, tossed the contents around a bit… and now we wait. Every couple days we’ll give them a toss to keep them well mixed. Here are the results:

So in a couple weeks/months, we should have something amazing to drink.

I wish we had thought of selling this happy pepper, but it was super tasty.

I hope the next one we cut open has the elusive winky frown ;(