How To Make A Simple Tomato Pasta Sauce
Created | Updated Nov 14, 2002
In terms of convenience and taste, you cannot go wrong with a simple tomato sauce for pasta. With all of the tomato-paste nightmares you can buy in jars, meant more for meat than a simple dried pasta shell, the ability to make a simple sauce means that taste need not be sacrificed to convenience. If you make a goodly batch at the beginning of the week you can boil up some pasta and combine it with the sauce for a lunch at work, chuck it together for a dinner when you get back or whip up a light supper. Heck, if you fancy it, have it for breakfast. I do.
This is not an original, startling recipe that will make Gordon Ramsay and Raymond Blanc stare at their computers in awe, questioning their inspriration. It's simple and very common, you'll find it in recipe book after recipe book, but good things bear repeating, I say, so here we go.
Love thy tomatoes. Because, friends, the tomato is a truly marvellous fruit. It can be robust and light, raw or cooked, sweet or savoury, small like a shallot or big like a apple. As many food writers have been pointing out, the somewhat anaemic examples you can find in supermarkets rarely do it justice. For extra taste try going for organic specimens, maybe from a farmer's market near to your house, or a grocer's down the street, instead of that out-of-town leviathan aircraft hanger with fifteen types of tomato that all taste exactly the same.
However, for this, we use tinned whole plum tomatoes. That may seem odd after my above diatribe but I wish to be kind to your pocket as well your eager pink tastebuds. Yet tinned plum tomatoes are perfect for a simple sauce like this one. They are robust and will serve us well. One thing: go for the Italian kind. I thought this was a silly recommendation at first but experience has shown that Italian tinned tomatoes (check the label) don't come out in a splurgy great mess like some of the British ones I've tried. We need them whole for the sauce. Go Italiano.
You'll also need extra-virgin olive oil. Yes, it's more expensive but it really is worth it. The olives are pressed to allow their oil to flow. The first pressing produces what is labelled as extra-virgin. The rest is your average olive oil. Extra-virgin olive oil loses flavour under heat so you use it mostly in marinades, salads, at the end of sauces, and so on. Frying up some chicken, use olive oil, which is cheaper and works a treat. But for this, where we'll add it at the end, go for the extra-virgin. Trust me, it makes ALL the difference. Dip your finger in and taste it.
Red wine vinegar. It's cheap, you never use that much and it'll last for ages.
Basil, we will also need. Fresh, not dried. Ah, Basil. Pronounced Bay-zul if you're from the United States, but Basil, like the boom-boom puppet fox Mr. Brush, if you're from Blighty. You can buy it in a pot, which is more fun and tastes better, though not quite as much fun as grabbing it from a garden. If you can do that, lucky you, if not, find your pot, if not that, the plastic covered cut examples will do, but it MUST BE FRESH. You can buy it from most places. You'll see and smell when you tear it. It's one of the most wonderful smells on the planet. Also love thy basil.
So, here's the recipe, or as some may say, the receipt:
Take two red peppers and two red chilli peppers and put them under a very hot grill until the skins turn black. It'll smell all burnt but that's good, as we're not going to eat the skins, but the tasty sweet stuff under that blackened skin. When all of the skins are black, take them out of the grill and pop them in a bowl. Cover the bowl in cling film. This will ease off the skins by steaming them.
When that's done, peel the skins off with your fingers. Discard the charred skins and remove the white-ish bits and seeds from the peppers and chillis. Please don't put your fingers in your eyes right now. I did that once. My wife still considers it one of my more hopeless moments and chuckles at the memory of my hopping pain. WASH YOUR HANDS NOW. Chop up the peppers and chillis into little bits, tasting both, for fun.
Chop up finely 3 large cloves of garlic and 3 shallots and fry them on a medium heat for a couple of minutes in four tablespoons of olive oil (not extra-virgin, save that for the end) in a good size, preferably deep, frying pan. Don't let the garlic colour so if it does, turn down your heat.
Add some dried oregano, preferably crunched up a bit under the back of a spoon. Keep heating for thirty seconds or so.
Then add your peppers and chillis and fry for a minute or so. Then add two cans of Italian tinned whole plum tomatoes, including all of the paste in the tin. Stir GENTLY, making sure the tomatoes don't spill their seeds, so to speak. This will make the sauce sweet, not bitter, like Kenneth Williams. So a gentle stir, friends.
Now the easy part. After the tomatoes have heated up, turn down the heat and simmer away for at least an hour. I like to wait longer. Stir occasionally but remember not to make the sauce like Kenneth Williams. Gently, friends and keep those Italian tomatoes in one piece.
After an hour or so, add at least a teaspoon of red wine vinegar. I say at least, because I add more. Some people don't appreciate the tang of the vinegar. I am a red wine vinegar freak (an emerging condition, quite tragic) and prefer a tablespoon or so. Then, satisfyingly, after being taunted by those little Italian delights for the past hour, crush up your tomatoes, seeds and all. Now it'll be sweet, you see. And it suddenly is very sauce-like.
The texture is your decision: if you want it more crushed, use your wooden spoon or a potato masher to have at the tomatoes. If you want a puree, pop it in the blender of processor and make it a paste. I prefer crushed. I like the bits.
Have your salt pepper grinder ready (I go for coarsely ground, as it gives surprising little punchy moments in your mouth. Your choice.) Add a good amont of pepper and a little salt. Taste and add more if you think it needs it. Your choice, though I'd recommend the pepper, also being a pepper freak (alas, no support groups for this, as yet).
Take it off the heat.
Now the magic touch that gives the sauce it's sheer, cheeky loveliness. You have in front of you at this point a decent sauce. What we do now is tear up a very goodly handful of basil and drop it all into the pan. Tear, don't cut. It more brilliantly releases the oils inside the leaves that makes basil so fabulously aromatic. It's also more fun and makes your fingers and thumbs smell lovely. We took the pan off the heat because basil, like extra-virgin olive oil, loses taste and smell under heat.
Then add four tablespoons of the eagerly awaited extra-virgin olive oil. Stir it all up, until the basil wilts in, which it will very soon.
Taste it. Serve with boiled pasta (boiled in salted water and a little oil in a big, big pan to let it all swim about like frolicking Victorian bathers). Shells are good with it, as are the bowties (possibly called Farfalle but don't quote me on that as I shall feign ignorance).
Eat what you want and put the rest in a container in the fridge to be attacked at will over the next few days. It goes for miles, so eat away. Always make in generous batches.
I like this with a parmesan cheese-covered chicken breast (first cover lightly in egg, then roll in finely grated parmesan), fried in olive oil. Also with some rocket (delicious peppery salad leaf) on the plate. Chuck some more parmesan cheese over the pasta, too.
I hope you enjoy it. Please do contact me with any essential additions and suggestion.
This is not an original, startling recipe that will make Gordon Ramsay and Raymond Blanc stare at their computers in awe, questioning their inspriration. It's simple and very common, you'll find it in recipe book after recipe book, but good things bear repeating, I say, so here we go.
Love thy tomatoes. Because, friends, the tomato is a truly marvellous fruit. It can be robust and light, raw or cooked, sweet or savoury, small like a shallot or big like a apple. As many food writers have been pointing out, the somewhat anaemic examples you can find in supermarkets rarely do it justice. For extra taste try going for organic specimens, maybe from a farmer's market near to your house, or a grocer's down the street, instead of that out-of-town leviathan aircraft hanger with fifteen types of tomato that all taste exactly the same.
However, for this, we use tinned whole plum tomatoes. That may seem odd after my above diatribe but I wish to be kind to your pocket as well your eager pink tastebuds. Yet tinned plum tomatoes are perfect for a simple sauce like this one. They are robust and will serve us well. One thing: go for the Italian kind. I thought this was a silly recommendation at first but experience has shown that Italian tinned tomatoes (check the label) don't come out in a splurgy great mess like some of the British ones I've tried. We need them whole for the sauce. Go Italiano.
You'll also need extra-virgin olive oil. Yes, it's more expensive but it really is worth it. The olives are pressed to allow their oil to flow. The first pressing produces what is labelled as extra-virgin. The rest is your average olive oil. Extra-virgin olive oil loses flavour under heat so you use it mostly in marinades, salads, at the end of sauces, and so on. Frying up some chicken, use olive oil, which is cheaper and works a treat. But for this, where we'll add it at the end, go for the extra-virgin. Trust me, it makes ALL the difference. Dip your finger in and taste it.
Red wine vinegar. It's cheap, you never use that much and it'll last for ages.
Basil, we will also need. Fresh, not dried. Ah, Basil. Pronounced Bay-zul if you're from the United States, but Basil, like the boom-boom puppet fox Mr. Brush, if you're from Blighty. You can buy it in a pot, which is more fun and tastes better, though not quite as much fun as grabbing it from a garden. If you can do that, lucky you, if not, find your pot, if not that, the plastic covered cut examples will do, but it MUST BE FRESH. You can buy it from most places. You'll see and smell when you tear it. It's one of the most wonderful smells on the planet. Also love thy basil.
So, here's the recipe, or as some may say, the receipt:
Take two red peppers and two red chilli peppers and put them under a very hot grill until the skins turn black. It'll smell all burnt but that's good, as we're not going to eat the skins, but the tasty sweet stuff under that blackened skin. When all of the skins are black, take them out of the grill and pop them in a bowl. Cover the bowl in cling film. This will ease off the skins by steaming them.
When that's done, peel the skins off with your fingers. Discard the charred skins and remove the white-ish bits and seeds from the peppers and chillis. Please don't put your fingers in your eyes right now. I did that once. My wife still considers it one of my more hopeless moments and chuckles at the memory of my hopping pain. WASH YOUR HANDS NOW. Chop up the peppers and chillis into little bits, tasting both, for fun.
Chop up finely 3 large cloves of garlic and 3 shallots and fry them on a medium heat for a couple of minutes in four tablespoons of olive oil (not extra-virgin, save that for the end) in a good size, preferably deep, frying pan. Don't let the garlic colour so if it does, turn down your heat.
Add some dried oregano, preferably crunched up a bit under the back of a spoon. Keep heating for thirty seconds or so.
Then add your peppers and chillis and fry for a minute or so. Then add two cans of Italian tinned whole plum tomatoes, including all of the paste in the tin. Stir GENTLY, making sure the tomatoes don't spill their seeds, so to speak. This will make the sauce sweet, not bitter, like Kenneth Williams. So a gentle stir, friends.
Now the easy part. After the tomatoes have heated up, turn down the heat and simmer away for at least an hour. I like to wait longer. Stir occasionally but remember not to make the sauce like Kenneth Williams. Gently, friends and keep those Italian tomatoes in one piece.
After an hour or so, add at least a teaspoon of red wine vinegar. I say at least, because I add more. Some people don't appreciate the tang of the vinegar. I am a red wine vinegar freak (an emerging condition, quite tragic) and prefer a tablespoon or so. Then, satisfyingly, after being taunted by those little Italian delights for the past hour, crush up your tomatoes, seeds and all. Now it'll be sweet, you see. And it suddenly is very sauce-like.
The texture is your decision: if you want it more crushed, use your wooden spoon or a potato masher to have at the tomatoes. If you want a puree, pop it in the blender of processor and make it a paste. I prefer crushed. I like the bits.
Have your salt pepper grinder ready (I go for coarsely ground, as it gives surprising little punchy moments in your mouth. Your choice.) Add a good amont of pepper and a little salt. Taste and add more if you think it needs it. Your choice, though I'd recommend the pepper, also being a pepper freak (alas, no support groups for this, as yet).
Take it off the heat.
Now the magic touch that gives the sauce it's sheer, cheeky loveliness. You have in front of you at this point a decent sauce. What we do now is tear up a very goodly handful of basil and drop it all into the pan. Tear, don't cut. It more brilliantly releases the oils inside the leaves that makes basil so fabulously aromatic. It's also more fun and makes your fingers and thumbs smell lovely. We took the pan off the heat because basil, like extra-virgin olive oil, loses taste and smell under heat.
Then add four tablespoons of the eagerly awaited extra-virgin olive oil. Stir it all up, until the basil wilts in, which it will very soon.
Taste it. Serve with boiled pasta (boiled in salted water and a little oil in a big, big pan to let it all swim about like frolicking Victorian bathers). Shells are good with it, as are the bowties (possibly called Farfalle but don't quote me on that as I shall feign ignorance).
Eat what you want and put the rest in a container in the fridge to be attacked at will over the next few days. It goes for miles, so eat away. Always make in generous batches.
I like this with a parmesan cheese-covered chicken breast (first cover lightly in egg, then roll in finely grated parmesan), fried in olive oil. Also with some rocket (delicious peppery salad leaf) on the plate. Chuck some more parmesan cheese over the pasta, too.
I hope you enjoy it. Please do contact me with any essential additions and suggestion.
