Rotten Tomatoes - Say it Taint So!

Bribery and collusion and the sale of tainted tomatoes?  I'm shocked, shocked to find such hijinks going on in agri-business!  No, not really.  The arrest of rotten tomato, Frederick Scott Salyer, owner of SK Foods for racketeering, fraud and obstruction of justice earlier this month isn't really shocking.  Neither is that he allegedly bribed companies to buy his mold-tainted products.  One more reason to make your own tomato sauce and tomato paste.

If you can sleep, you can make tomato paste....it's that easy. 

Dreamy Tomato Paste

6 lbs. of Roma or plum tomatoes
Kosher salt

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.  Peel tomatoes - cut an X in the bottom of the tomato and drop the tomato into boiling water (don't do more than two or three at time) for the length of time it takes you to sing The Tomato Song (about one minute).  Remove from the water, set aside until they are cool to the touch.  Tomatoes should slip out of their skin when you peel back the X.
Quarter the peeled tomatoes and run them through the fine sieve of a food mill to remove the seeds.  Salt lightly and pour tomato puree into a large shallow roasting pan or onto several baking sheets (with sides).
Place in the warm oven for 2 hours, stir and turn off the oven, leaving the tomatoes in the warm oven overnight.  In the morning, remove from the oven, stir again and let cool completely.  You will have about 2 cups of gorgeous deep ruby red tomato paste.