Hi all!

I am excited to share with you an annual tradition of mine… End of season pasta sauce!

Each year, it's a little different. I don’t have a standard recipe, and it's inspired by what we have at Philly Foodworks and what I am feeling. This year, my family and I took some video while making it. Check out a video (link to video on social media) of the process.

We are produce people. Summer in our lives is both the most challenging and most inspiring season of the year. All summer, we’re getting constant calls, texts, and emails from growers informing us of new or changing produce availability. Maybe a big thunderstorm has wiped out an entire crop, or an extreme heat wave has matured a crop a week before it was initially expected. Farmers are harvesting new varieties that we have asked them to grow, and they have other items we have never seen before that they were excited about growing. We are running all over southeastern PA and southern Jersey, picking up at farms and bringing gorgeous produce into our warehouse, case after case. Our staff kitchen is filled with an abundance of watermelon for snacking. Our employees take home shelves filled with delicious tomatoes that might not hold until next week or have a minor bruise.

Several years ago, I started making a Marinara sauce at the end of the season to spend some time with produce and appreciate all we and our farmers have accomplished. It's a labor of love that entails lots of chopping and stirring a hot pot. All in all, it takes about 8 to 10 hours. In that time, I get to reflect on the season, share time and space with my family, see all of the beautiful colors come to life, and smell the fragrance of the field. It's a beautiful experience. Ultimately, I am left with 8 - 9 quarts of out-of-this-world marinara sauce. I give some to family and friends. I bring in some for coworkers. I put up a couple of quarts for the winter, then eat marina on everything for the next 10 days.

Here is a brief rundown of how I made my sauce this year. There is intentionally no recipe because the ingredients are in charge. As long as you use a lot of produce, taste a long the way, have fun, and appreciate the people and plants in your life, it will be perfect every time.

I sautéd about 4lbs of onions in a large pot (everything will get added to this pot) until translucent and sweet.
I roasted about 3lbs of sweet peppers (Jimmy Nardello and Delilah) and a 3/4 pound of hot peppers (Serrano and Long hots) on 400 for about 20 - 30 minutes. My sauce came out a little spicy this year. It's been a long summer. Our second kid was born on the Solstice, and I lost my dad two weeks later. I didn’t intend to make it so hot, but I guess I needed a little fire to cleanse the senses. Fun fact about the Jimmy Nardello peppers… One of our farmers (Reuben Rehil) has grown this local pepper variety for the last ten years. I had never heard about it before he started growing it. It's a versatile, sweet, show-stopper of a pepper. Eight years ago, we did a little post about this pepper, and one of our customers reached out to us to let us know that her grandfather was Jimmy Nardello, who brought these seeds to the States years ago. Call it terroir, local food, or a Philly Thing, I don’t care. It’s stuff like this that makes me feel connected and grounded in my life.
I chopped up 30 lbs of heirloom tomatoes and added them to the onions. Plum tomatoes are more traditional and lead to a thicker sauce, but I love the taste of heirlooms. We had these extras at the end of the week, and since I immersion-blend the sauce at the end, it all gets pretty thick anyway.
I added in the hot peppers to the tomatoes and let them cook for about 3 - 4 hours. I like a rolling boil, mainly because there is a lot of liquid to cook off, but make sure you stir it every 15 - 30 minutes or so, or it will start to burn.
I then chopped up three large bulbs of gorgeous hardneck garlic, two bunches of fresh basil, and about an ounce of fresh oregano. I also graded about a pound of carrots. I added all of this, plus a stick and a half of butter, about a half cup of olive oil, a little apple cider vinegar, and lots of salt and pepper.
I then let that cook for another 3 - 4 hours, stirring every 15 - 30 minutes. As the liquid cooks off, you need to stir more frequently.
At this point, the sauce is starting to cook down. I got out the immersion blender and blended the whole thing well. I also turned down the heat to a simmer. I let it simmer for another hour, and then it's done!

If you aren’t planning on making an end-of-season marinara, I hope this inspires you to try it. We have cases of tomatoes in our market, and for about $75 or so in ingredients, you will have more sauce than you know what to do with. Plus, it will be a wonderful experience. As our farmer, John Stoltzfus, says, enjoy the produce!