Difficulty 1/5
Home-made tomato sauce has this lovely, comforting smell to it. Maybe it’s the vegetable stock, or the onions cooking, or the tomatoes, but it definitely feels like home. My tomato sauce recipe has evolved over the years for me and this is the one I’ve been doing lately and I’m in love. It’s chunky so you feel the bits of cherry tomato, super fragrant and just so so good.
This sauce is right up there in my favourite sauces along with alfredo sauce which is a classic comfort food as well. The difference is that this one is a bit more fresh and I can easily have it in summer and winter.
The other thing is that you can use it for other purposes as well. For example, you could put it on top of a chicken Milanese along with cheese and put it under the broil in the oven to turn it golden brown… WOW. You could also use it as a sauce for meatballs. I actually published a tomato sauce with that recipe and there you see it was different before… still yummy though!
All I know is that it’s delicious beyond any doubt and I could even have it on a piece of toast.
The pasta choice is important on this one. Since it’s chunky, you want a pasta with texture or holes so that it can trap all those ingredients. If you choose to blend it, on the other hand, you can choose any pasta you like, even flat. This time I chose whole wheat spirals 🙂
Ingredients
Vegetable stock
- 100 g celery cut roughly to a medium size
- 100 g onion cut roughly to a medium size
- 100 g carrots peeled and cut roughly to a medium size
- 1 bayleaf
- 2 lt water
For the sauce
- 20 ml olive oil
- 100 g onion finely chopped
- 100 g carrot peeled and cut in small cubes
- 1 bayleaf
- 1 garlic clove finely grated or minced
- 3 tbsp tomato paste
- 50 ml white wine
- 400 g cherry tomatoes cut in quarters or 4 tomatoes peeled, deseeded and cut in cubes
- 4 tomatoes peeled, deseeded and in cubes
- 500 ml vegetable stock from above
- 3-4 basil sprigs tied together for easy removal
- 1 parmesan crust (optional)
- to taste salt and pepper
Instructions
Vegetable stock
- Put everything inside a pot and bring to a boil. Once it starts boiling lower to medium-low and let simmer for 30min.
Tomato sauce
- First we cook the carrots, onion and bayleaf with olive oil on medium heat until the onion is soft and translucent.
- Add the garlic clove and cook for a few seconds
- Add the tomato paste and cook for at least one minute.
- Add the white wine and let it evaporate completely.
- Add the tomatoes and cherry tomatoes and heat up until steam comes out of them.
- Add the vegetable stock and salt.
- Add the extra aromatics: parmesan crust and basil sprigs.
- Let it come to a boil and then reduce heat to a minimum. Let cook for 30-45min so the tomatoes have time to soften and to start to disintegrate.
- Once ready, remove the parmesan crust and basil and boil extra time if needed to reduce the amount of liquid. Adjust level of salt and add a bit of sugar if tomatoes were acidic.
