Circle M Farm

Michael Perry kicks off his memoir Truck: A Love Story on a pile of sheep manure the size of a yurt. Then Chapter 2 begins with an absolutely delectable recipe. This method of making tomato sauce and stock is attributed to Tom Colicchio’s Think Like a Chef a few pages later, but here is Perry’s version:

I roasted [the tomatoes] in a deep pan with salt, olive oil, cloves of unshucked garlic, and sprigs of thyme. You ladle off the juice every twenty minutes or so and freeze it for a sweet, delicate stock best consumed during snowstorms. The residual pulp gathers body from the garlic and spirit from the thyme. The spent garlic, when squeezed warmly from its husk directly upon your tongue, will slacken your face and make you shimmy.

My gosh! I know it’s January and I lost a whole season of fresh tomatoes to late blight this past summer, but I’d just about give an entire chest freezer of pork and beef to be able to make that right now.