Conserva Di Pomodoro Crudo - Fermented Tomato Paste

So, this autumn while I was harvesting the last of our heirloom tomatoes, I decided to try an ancient recipe for fermenting tomatoes to preserve them for the winter. Its called Conserva Di Pomodoro Crudo, obviouslyit hales from Italy in my opinion one of the fermentation powerhouses in the culinary world. They ferment, cure and pickle everything, and don’t quote me but I believe this went back before Roman times when that part of the world communicated with the east… The true fermentation capital of the world….

A brief explanation of how this recipe works, why you wan to do it, and why you WONT get sick. Tomatoes contain a lot of acidity, they contain so much acidity common bacteria that cause horrible diseases like, clostridium botulinum, clostridium perfringens, salmonella typhi and other life threatening bacteria CAN NOT live it this environment without their cell walls disintegrating causing instant death or simply put in a scientific name lysis. This is also happens with environments contain a high percentage of salt its called osmotic lysis. This is why we can eat kim chi, sauerkraut, cheese, yoghurt, and cured meats. Just send me an email if this doesn’t make sense….

So to start this recipe it’s quite easy. Harvest some fresh tomatoes place them in a container and macerate them… I used a muddler found in most cocktail kits.

Cover the top with a coffee filter so it can breath

Wait 5-7 days until a white mild appears. Once again this white mold is good! Discard if any other color mold appears, if this happens it’s because the acidity wasn’t high enough in your tomatoes. When the white mold appears, stir it into the tomatoes and repeat this process about 3 or 4 times. Drain off the liquid after each time you stir. You should notice the mold appears quicker and quicker. If not, no worries, as long as it appears. WHITE.

The next step is to wrap the “tomato paste” in a cheese cloth and let hang until all the moisture has dropped out. Scrape the white mold off the sides of the cheese cloth if it appears.

After it stops dripping, this will take a few days sometimes a week, you can weigh your tomato paste and then fold in ¼ the weight in salt… so it you have 4 grams of tomato paste fold in 1 gram of salt…

And there you have it. An extremely healthy alternative to store bought tomato paste… BTW you don’t even need to refrigerate it if you don’t have the room.