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Tomato sauce forms the base for so many dishes, I doubt any of us would like to be faced with the prospect of attempting to list them all! This being the case, why then are we often so blase about the standard of the tomato sauce which we incorporate in all those many dishes? Do we take the attitude that tomato sauce is just tomato sauce, another ingredient on the list? I believe that far too often we do and that the quality of some of the meals we make suffers accordingly. I have therefore begun making an extremely basic tomato sauce and freezing it in batches. This lets me know that when I am considering making a dish which calls for it, I have some quality, homemade tomato sauce ready to hand.

When I first began making tomato sauce, I recall adding herbs such as basil or oregano, garlic and even such basic ingredients as salt, but then one day, I thought to myself, "Why am I adding all of this to a basic sauce when the recipe I later incorporate it in may well call for the same ingredients, or even worse, ingredients which are incompatible with some of the ones I already have present in the sauce?" Asking myself that question taught me a very worthwhile lesson: keep basic sauces basic! As you will see, my homemade tomato sauce now takes a very different form.

I begin by taking four pounds of ripe tomatoes and making a small, "x" shaped cross in the top of them. Each slit should be about half an inch long and deep enough only to fully pierce the skin. I then place them in a large pan or bowl and pour enough boiling water on top of them to completely cover them and leave them for one minute. Drain them carefully and put them in to another bowl (or even the same one - empty now,) covering them with freezing cold (iced if possible) water and leave them for a few minutes. The rapid expansion and contraction of the flesh should loosen the skins and allow them to be subsequently peeled off quite easily by grabbing them where you had previously scored them.

Cut the tomatoes in half and scoop out the seeds and inner liquid with a teaspoon and discard. Roughly chop them into approximately one inch pieces.

Next, we want to take one red bell pepper and de-skin it. There are two ways to do this. Either bake it for about fifteen to twenty minutes in a hot oven, or much quicker, scorch the skin by sitting the pepper on a lighted gas ring, turning it frequently and carefully, until the skin is quite literally blackened all over. I can assure you that it will only be the skin

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