Late-season tomatoes
- Provenance
- Producer details will appear here when verified.
- History
- Smoking tomatoes over hardwood before saucing is an American southwestern habit with roots in Mesoamerican comal cooking.
Sealed, numbered and signed by the hand that made it.
THE SMOKEHOUSE
Smoked Tomato Sauce
Whole tomatoes smoked over applewood, then reduced for six hours.
$22
Pre-launch
Release notes on the Cellar List.
Pre-launch: we're not taking orders quite yet. Add pieces to your case and it will be held for you — join the Cellar List for first notice when we open.
Pantry / shelf-stable
Intended as an ambient-storage item. Recipes, packaging and validated shelf-life vary by product — final storage and shelf-life instructions will be confirmed on the product label before release.
- Origin
- Producer details will appear when verified
- Batch
- TBC · PRE-LAUNCH
- Pairing
- Chianti Classico
- Batch size
- Made in small released batches
- Keeping
- Intended for ambient pantry storage. Final storage and shelf-life instructions will be confirmed on the product label before release.
- On the palate
- Sweet, dense, unmistakably smoky, with a savoury edge like slow-roast onion.
Where this dish comes from
Smoking vegetables rather than meat has deep roots in Mesoamerican cooking — the chipotle is simply a chile hot-smoked and dried — and smoke-drying chiles and tomatoes over wood predates European contact by centuries.
Europe's contribution is the long reduction: a slow, patient cooking-down of tomato into a dense conserva is a discipline found across several Mediterranean traditions.
Smoked tomato preparations draw on both Mesoamerican smoking traditions and the Mediterranean reduction tradition.
How we make it
Applewood is used rather than heavier hardwoods, since tomato is delicate and sugary and heavier smoke can turn acrid quickly.
Reduction happens in a wide, shallow pan rather than a tall pot, since surface area speeds evaporation without stewing the flavour.
Hot smoke, then reduce
3 hours smoke · 6 hours reduce
- 01Whole tomatoes smoked three hours over applewood until the skins split.
- 02Passed through a food mill, seeds and skins discarded.
- 03Reduced six hours in wide copper with onion, oil and one bay leaf.
- 04Jarred at volume, roughly a third of where it started.
As it is, with pasta and nothing else. It does not want help.
THE INGREDIENT LEDGER
Every defining ingredient, named where we can: what it is, and what it has meant to the people who kept it. Producer and sourcing details will appear here as they are verified.
Oak & fruitwood smoke
- Provenance
- Producer details will appear here when verified.
- History
- Fruitwood over oak: the oak carries, the fruitwood sweetens. A cooper's logic applied to fire.
Recipes, packaging, storage instructions and shelf-life vary by product and validated production method. Follow the instructions on the label; keep chilled items refrigerated.
