Tomato sauce (a.k.a. Sugo di pomodoro)
 
Preparation: 15 mins
Cooking: 25-30 mins
    
Difficulty: Easy

Suitable for freezing
    
Vegetarian

Tomato sauce is an Italian classic and there is nothing better than to prepare it yourself. The recipe is straightforward, the Ingredients are extremely easy to find and it is also very cheap to make. If you do not have time to prepare this sauce in the traditional way, a faster way is to buy a can of chopped tomatoes. Nowadays, there are some canned tomatoes producers (thanks goodness!) that can give you organic chopped tomatoes without any chemical additives or pesticides in them. Use the tomato sauce to top pasta or gnocchi. This is also the base sauce for preparing Aubergines Parmigiana with the only variation being that for the Auburgine Parmigiana I prefer to use butter to sweat the onion off.

THIS IS TO TOP 400 g OF PASTA (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 8 Tomatoes - medium size (preferably organic ripened on the vine)
• Half red onion
• 80 ml (3 fl oz) Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt for seasoning

Alternatively:

• A can of chopped tomatoes
• Half red onion
• 80 ml (3 fl oz) Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt for seasoning

Directions:

Take a large pan full of water, bring the water to boil, put the tomatoes into the pan and boil for 2-3 minutes until you see some cracks on the tomatoes skin.

Meanwhile, finely chop half red onion.

You can see the cracks on the tomatoes skin.

Peel all the tomatoes with your fingers or, if they are too hot, with the aid of a small knife. The skin will come off easily without any problem.

Half the tomatoes and roughly scoop out the core and seeds. I suggest collecting the scooped out tomatoes into a small container.

Put the cleaned tomatoes into a bowl and sieve the contents of the container over the bowl (pressing down with a spoon to extract more juice).

Finally, you should have only seeds and cores in the sieve. These can be discarded.

Using a simple masher, roughly press down in order to break the tomatoes (why use fancy tools when you do not need to). For those who wish to have a thinner sauce, like the “passata di pomodoro”, I suggest to use a food mill - see Food Mill

Heat the olive oil over a low/medium heat.

When the oil is hot, add the onion.

Sweat the onion off until it gets golden.

When the onion is golden, add the tomatoes. As I said before, if you have not prepared the tomatoes yourself, just add the chopped tomatoes from the can.

Stir gently and let the sauce reduce over low heat for about 25-30 minutes.

Now, the most important part! Season with salt, stir for few seconds and taste it to check if you need to add a little more salt. The other important thing is to check the level of acidity (depending of the tomato quality and variety, you can have varying levels of acidity). Normally the onion brings this level down, but if you think that the sauce is a bit to acidic, then you can correct this by adding a pinch of sugar; that’s it!

Buon appetito!

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