Classic tomato sauce
It’s true. I am in love with this tomato sauce. The cooking part takes a bit of time, but it is genuinely the easiest sauce you’ll make and it’s sooooo much better than any sauce you can pick up in a jar.
Throw a load of ingredients into a pan, leave it over a low, slow heat for a few hours. The rest is history. There are so many ways to use it – and not only in the recipes in this chapter. Get creative: make a meatball sandwich or a heartwarming pasta bake or even just use it as a base for greens and a pan-fried fillet of hake. The options are endless.
Don’t forget to be gentle with the garlic – you want it to soften without colouring. If you smell pungent, smoky garlic-ness, it’s gone too far and is burning. Just peel some more and go again.
This recipe is from my book, Poppy Cooks: The Food You Need
Photographs © Louise Hagger, 2021
Ingredients
- 10 garlic cloves, peeled
- 1 1/2 tsp salt, plus extra for the garlic
- 120ml olive oil
- 6 x 400g tins of plum tomatoes
- A big pinch of black pepper
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp red wine vinegar
- A bunch of basil, leaves picked and torn
- 1 red chilli (optional), sliced into rounds (deseeded for less heat)
Method
- Mince your garlic into a paste: chop it as finely as you can, then sprinkle on a bit of salt (not the 11⁄2 teaspoons, they are for later), then keep chopping and squashing with the blade of your knife. Alternatively, throw it in a garlic crusher with the bit of salt and you should be left with a lovely paste.
- Place a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the olive oil and garlic, like the match-made-in-heaven that they are.
- Fry the garlic for about 2–3 minutes, until it’s aromatic – you’re not looking for any colour in the garlic.
- Add the tomatoes, then pour water into one of the empty tins and give it a swill. Transfer the water to the next empty tin, swill, then to the next and so on to get all of the tomato juice out. Add the tomato-y water to the pan, too.
- Add the 11⁄2 teaspoons of salt and the pinch of pepper, then reduce the temperature to low and leave the sauce to slowly bubble away for 21⁄2 hours, until it’s deep red and thick (it should reduce by about one quarter).
- After the 21⁄2 hours, stir through the sugar, vinegar and torn basil, and the chilli, if using, and you’re ready to go. How easy was that?