Recipes: Tomato Sauce :: Grosse is a geek

Tomato Sauce

This recipe is utterly gorgeous. Once you have made some and found out just how easy it is, you will find yourself making meals so that you have an excuse to use this sauce (I did).

Ingredients:

2 Apples (whatever is available)

1 Medium Onion

2 teaspoons Oil for frying

500mls Sieved Tomatoes

1 teaspoon of Salt

2 tablespoons Sugar (whatever type that you have in the cupboard)

Freshly ground Black Pepper

Vinegar to taste

Method:

Chop the onion finely (as fine as you would expect to find in commercial tomato sauce - around 1/8 inch cube). It is worth taking your time over this as the size of the onion will alter the way he sauce flows and, more importantly, its texture. At this point, you should chop up the apple as well. Skin it but it is not all that important to make it fine as it will be broken down when cooked.

Fry the onion lightly in the oil in a saucepan adding a few twists of pepper. When it is around half done add a little water, the sugar and the apple. Cook the mixture until the apple has broken down - adding water if necessary. When the apple is cooked, add the sieved tomatoes and the salt. Add vinegar to taste - make it as sweet or as acidic as you want.

Pour it into clean, dry jars and screw the lids down.

Variations:

Alter the time that you fry the onion - less time and more of the raw onion flavour - more time and the more of the caramelised flavour will come through. If you really wanted, you could hold back half of the onion and add it part way through the frying thereby giving you a distinct mixture of the flavours.

You can, of course, make many variations on the humble tomato sauce but it is worth remembering that it is particularly nice as just the basic set of ingredients. Some variants are below:

Chilli;

Curry (add some curry powder to the frying onions);

Hoi Sin (again, add the Hoi Sin sauce to the frying onions);

Garlic; and so on.

Storage:

This tomato sauce has hot got all of the preservatives in that many tomato sauces have. However, vinegar and sugar act as preservatives if in high enough concentrations so it is worth having a try. Keep opened jars in the refrigerator and use quickly (I don't seem to have any problem with this).

Serving suggestions:

Serve with chips, burgers between toasted baps and so on.