Hoopla Sauce!

With Fresh tomatoes comes Hoopla Sauce
We have 6 or more quarts of this canned. Usually a quart with ingredients will cover 4 or 5 people

Hoopla
Hoopla is a red-ish sauce made from scratch. By itself, it is a thin sauce that works well on rice or noodles. There are going to be several variations of this, depending on what is fresh, and if you are putting a meat in it. All ingredients are as fresh as humanly possible, mostly out of the garden.

Traditionally, this dish is served over rice.

Hoopla Base Ingredients
> 12 tomatoes – quartered
> ¼ cup Olive Oil
> 1 T Italian seasoning
> ½ t Red Pepper flakes
> 2 T crushed garlic
> 2 T Powered Vegetable or Chicken stock
> 2 T Stevia/Sugar
> 1 t smoked paprika

Options – ohhhh so many
Other vegies that work nicely in this sauce
> Mushrooms
> Summer squash
> Zucchini
> Spinach
> Onion
> Red/Green peppers

To start the process, quarter the fresh tomatoes and put them in a bowl.

To a stock pot, add olive oil, Italian seasoning, red pepper flakes, and garlic. With medium heat, cook those ingredients a few minutes until the garlic starts to brown. Add tomatoes. Stir them in, and stir every few minutes until they start to break down.

Add sugar, paprika, and Vegetable/Chicken stock. Change the temperature to low. Let this simmer. The longer the better. I like an hour. It can be done in 30 minutes.

Five minutes before serving, add the vegetables and change the heat to medium. Cook to the point you like you veggies. We like them crisper, so we do not cook them very long.

There are instances where we want the sauce thicker or to have significantly more volume.
There are instances where adding a Can of tomato paste to thicken the sauce, or a can of diced/pureed tomatoes to increase volume or cut down the burn on the red pepper flakes.

Seafood Hoopla
This is a popular variation. We typically add
> Shrimp
> Mussels
> Clams
> Scallops
> ½ Cup Sherry

There are a couple of things to be aware off.

The above seafood cooks in about 5 minutes. No more, or it will get tough.

Mussels and clams should be alive. Before cooking them, they need to be washed. They should also be closed. If they are not, pinch the shell together a couple of times, if it closes, it is alive, and can be eaten. If it does not close, it is bad, toss it out.

Once cooked, the mussels and clams will open. If they do not, do not eat them, they are bad.