This sauce is a little labour intensive but the flavour is intensive too as well as unctuous and very versatile. I use it as the tomato sauce for pizza, pasta marinara, to serve with meatballs and, in the next week as a topping for a meatloaf recipe I will be posting. I also add a finely chopped red chilli to 1/2 cup of this sauce to make a fantastic sauce for Spanish Potatas Bravas.
The recipe below makes about 350ml of beautiful sauce that you can refrigerate up to a week or freeze.
Ingredients
1kg ripe roma tomatoes
Olive oil
Castor sugar
Salt
Fresh ground black pepper
Method
Preheat your oven to 175C
Wash the tomatoes under cold water and cut them in half lengthwise.
Using a small paring knife, cut out the green top of the core from each half by cutting in a v-shape.
Line a baking tray with baking paper and place a wire rack the same size as the tray onto the tray. Place tomatoes cut side up on the rack so they nestle up against each other.
Drizzle olive oil over each half tomato.
Lightly sprinkle each half with a half pinch of sugar.
Sprinkle a good pinch of salt onto each half. Imagine the amount of salt you would put onto a half tomato to eat it fresh.
Grind fresh black pepper generously over the tomatoes.
Bake for 1.5 to 2 hours until the tomatoes caramelise a little on the edges and are almost about to collapse.
Allow to cool.
Place a fine sieve over a bowl and in lots of about 6 to 8 tomato halves at a time, slip the skins off and press them firmly through the sieve. I use the back of a serving spoon stirring the pulp to extract as much juice as possible.
Discard the pulp and process the next batch until all the tomatoes have been pressed through the sieve.
Scrape the sauce on the underneath of the sieve into the bowl. Don't waste a drop!
Store in the refrigerator or freeze until required.
Comments