There's been a flood of slightly overripe, "blemished" tomatoes left over from our farmstand table recently, as our tomato season winds down.  So, I made a double batch of ketchup.  This is in the Indonesian style, with a detour through Spain.  Some of the ingredients you won't find in the Heinz version.  I thought you might like to see the recipe for it.  It's a little bit of a project, as is most canning, but if you do it yourself you can juggle the ingredients to suit your own taste, and it can be fun to do as a family project.

Next week we will start talking green tomatoes.

Ketchup

2 qts. tomato pulp

2-3 big red bell peppers

hot chilis (like fresno, serrano, arbol) to taste

1/2 c. fish sauce

1 c. cider vinegar

1/2 c. almonds

6" ginger

8 garlic cloves

2 oz. tamarind paste

1 t. salt

The basic technique is to blend all of this into a very smooth puree using a powerful blender (I use a VitaMix).  Then add 1 1/2 c. sugar and cook it down on the stove top until it thickens to the degree you want.  Puree the solids first (almonds, garlic, ginger, tamarind) with enough liquid to make a smooth paste, then blend in the tomatoes and peppers.  It may take two or more batches.

It's difficult to specify the amount of hot chilis to add, since they vary a lot in heat.  Taste the result as you go along and stop when you get to about the heat you want.  In the recent batch, I used fresno chilis and a liberal amount of habenero hot sauce.

This will make about two quarts of ketchup.

--Michael Durphy