Ingredients
- 8-10 Fresh Tomatoes
- 1 tin Anchovies (optional)
- 3/4 glass White Wine
- 8 cloves Garlic, crushed
- 4 tbsp Olive Oil
- 12 Basil leaves (optional)
- Salt & Black Pepper
Cuisine: Cooking time: 30-45 mins Serving: 4 people
Notes & Tips
The anchovies give a lovely salty flavour but are not strictly required, so for a vegetarian version just add a little extra salt instead of the anchovies!
You can use this sauce as a base for many types of tomato sauce dishes with Pasta. However, many of our friends enjoy this sauce just as it is, tossed into pretty much any kind of pasta. Just cook the pasta until it is almost done, then cook it the remaining few minutes in the tomato sauce, tossing it to make sure all the pasta gets nicely coated. For the amount of sauce in this recipe, you would need about 500g of pasta.
Method
- Boil a large saucepan of water. Score an ‘X’ in the bottom of each tomato and place them tomatoes in the boiling water for about 15-20 seconds. When the skin starts to split, remove the tomatoes from the saucepan and place in a bowl of ice water. You can then peel off the skin easily. Once all the tomatoes are peeled, chop them well, removing the stalks.
- Heat a frying pan to low/medium heat and add the oil. Allow the oil to heat gently. Do not overheat or the garlic will burn.
- Finely chop the garlic and add it to the oil. Cook very gently for 4-5 minutes until the garlic collapses. This will allow the garlic flavour to be released into the oil. Do not burn the garlic, remove from the heat temporarily if it gets too hot.
- While the garlic if cooking, finely chop and mash the anchovies (optional). The aim is to dissolve the anchovies in the oil, so the more finely chopped and mashed they are the better. Add the anchovies to the oil and cook gently, stirring and mashing them until they are more or less dissolved.
- Increase the heat and add the white wine a little at a time, trying to maintain a consistent temperature. The wine will start to bubble and at this stage you need to reduce it until it becomes a little more “sticky”. Just keep cooking and stirring occasionally until the whole mixture becomes slightly thicker and sticky.
- At this stage, add the chopped tomato. You can also use tinned tomatoes if you wish. Simmer gently on a low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring regularly. Once the sauce heats fully, add the basil leaves (optional). The tomatoes should disintegrate and become a very tasty tomato sauce.
- The sauce should be quite salty from the anchovies so season it with black pepper and a little more salt if required. Sometimes, if the tomatoes are too sharp, you may need to add about 1⁄2 tsp of sugar to balance the flavour. Always add salt and sugar slowly, a bit at a time, and mix well and taste before adding more.
Meal: Food type:
