by John Mcdougall

Created on: August 31, 2010

Tomato Sauce

Real tomato sauce, as far as this delighter in deliciousness is concerned, is slow food. Slo-o-o-ow; days slow. Tomato sauce is something that takes time.

And let me assure you, it is worth every second.

Now slow food really isn't very time-consuming, it just takes dedication. You have to think ahead, plan ahead; and if you have got this far successfully, you'll be salivating ahead, which should make it taste even better! Slow food is delighting in the chemical changes that are taking place in the ingredients, simple plain ingredients that, when they're treated right, transform.

Tomatoes. We all know tomatoes and understand the different tastes and textures these can provide: crisp sweet fruit flavours juicily crunchy raw and young, or an assault of a dense flavour when cut in two, drizzled in lots of olive oil and a generous sprinkle of salt grilled cut-down on a hot plate til well browned and never turned and served at breakfasts with bacon, poached eggs and mushrooms.

But slow-cooked, tomatoes reinvent themselves and congeal the essences of earth and fruit whence they sprang, like wines aging in barrels growing in density each slow turn of the moon.

For my sauce you want to have a few good size jars or bottles handy, because if you want to cook these wondrous fruits for this long you need to start with a lot. Get a big saucepan, one that makes you wish it were a cauldron. I use a cast aluminium pressure cooker. To this i add a chunk of butter and enough good extra virgin olive oil to coat the bottom quarter to half a centimetre - a good glug. And a couple of peppercorns, maybe coarsely ground, a cup of sugar and a sprig of fresh rosemary. I know it takes a while to grow, so transient lifestyles make it hard to have a supply, but if you have a garden and grow just one thing, rosemary is wonderful picked and used in one flourish. And you know your ingredients; this is so important in the appreciation and satisfaction. This, itself, is an essential ingredient in slow food.

You can also use thyme, marjoram, sage... Once the concept of the chemistry is familiar, it is all like jazz.

Now, get:

Two large onions, brown or white (you could, I guess - and have done - use Spanish onions, but that's a different direction)
4 cloves of garlic
salt
cracked pepper
4-5kg ripe tomatoes. (The better things you put in...)

Herbs / spices as improvised
A glass or two of red wine

First, warm the saucepan on a low heat to melt the butter slowly and let the oils meet and

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