Penguin Anniversary Edition: The Naked Chef
By Jamie Oliver
Basic tomato sauce
1 hr 10 mins
Not Too Tricky
serves 6 to 8
About the recipe
This sauce can be frozen for a couple of months, or refrigerated for up to a week, and is the basis of a lot of dishes.
Recipe From
Ingredients
1 large clove of garlic
olive oil
1 small dried red chilli
2 teaspoons dried oregano
3 × 400g tins of quality Italian plum tomatoes
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 handful of fresh basil or marjoram (or both)
extra virgin olive oil
Method
- Peel and finely chop the garlic, then gently fry in a thick-bottomed pan with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Crumble in the chilli, add the oregano and tomatoes.
- Mix gently, but do not break up the tomatoes as this will release the pips, which will make the sauce slightly bitter – by leaving the tomatoes whole and letting the mixture cook slowly you’ll get a nice sweet sauce. (You can remove the pips from the tomatoes if you want, but I don’t bother.) Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 1 hour.
- Add the vinegar to the pan, then stir and chop up the tomatoes in the sauce.
- Pick the basil or marjoram and roughly chop, then add to the pan.
- Season well to taste with sea salt and black pepper, and finish with 2-3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.
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