Tomato Sauce

This is a tomato sauce I first made when I had a glut of tomatoes in the garden. Two years after it was first bottled it still tasted beautifully rich and fresh

If you have your own tomatoes, so much the better, if not the store bought variety will still work well and the keeping qualities are good. It does need refrigerating though. It will also freeze with very little loss of quality.

Ingredients

2k (4.5lbs) skinned and de-seeded* tomatoes
2 red onions, chopped
2 tbs olive oil
6 garlic cloves, minced or crushed
1/2 cup brown sugar
1tbs raspberry vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

*to skin tomatoes, cut a little cross in the skin at the flower end, put them in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Leave for 30 seconds and plunge into cold water. The skin will come away easily. De-seed by cutting them in half and squeezing, or you could use a teaspoon to scrape the seeds out.

Start by gently frying the onion in the oil until soft, then add the chopped tomato and cook through while stirring. A good deal of the water in the tomatoes will be driven off, which is what you want. They will also start to change color.

That's the signal to add the garlic. Cook this through for about 2 minutes and then add the rest of the ingredients except the salt and pepper.

Bring this mixture to the boil, remove from the heat and cover. You now have a choice.

The way I cook this sauce is to put it in a covered cast iron casserole dish in the oven at it's lowest setting and leave it overnight. This is by far the best method.

Alternatively, you can cook the sauce in a covered, thick-bottomed pan over low heat for at least an hour. Do not leave unattended, however, and stir it from time to time to avoid 'catching' and burning.

Once cooked, adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

You can use this sauce warm or cold. You can also further refine it by blitzing it in a blender and pushing it through a sieve.

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First published on Qassia