tomato sauce: classic red sauce made by fresh tomatoes

Classic red sauce! Tomato sauce is an all-purpose sauce. I like it freshly made, the fruity flavor of tomato brings me a good meal and a good mood.

This sauce is made by beef tomatoes, simply I like its rich pulps and it’s most available in my neighborhood markets. Normally it’s made by plum tomatoes or Roma tomatoes in Italy. You can use any kinds of tomatoes you have. Cooking is an art to make your most locally accessible ingredients incorporated into a fine meal.

The sauce goes well with many ingredients, both meat and vegetables. When you have this sauce, it’s convenient to make tomato pasta, pizza, stew, soup, and so many. 

1. peel tomato skin
   • remove tomatoes’ top stem cores, cross slice tomatoes’ bottoms
   • prepare a pot of hot-boiling water, put all the tomatoes into the pot, let it boiled for 2 to 3 minutes
   • taken out and let tomatoes cooled down, and tomato skins are easily to be peeled off
2. remove tomato seeds
   • cut these tomatoes in half or quarters
   • prepare a bowl and a sieve, scoop out the seeds and squeeze the juice
3. make tomato puree
   • put tomato pulps into food processor, blend it and get a smooth texture.
   • if you like the sauce having some lovely tomato chunks remained, just blend the half amount of tomato pulps
   • when the skin-less, seed-less, smooth puree is done, we’re half-way in complete.
4. have other ingredients chopped
   • chop and dice the onion
   • slice and chop the garlic
5. make onion and basil puree
   • put onion and basil into food processor and blend it
   • this step is optional, my preference is to blend onion and basil into very small pieces, it’s much easier to be dissolved into the sauce when cooking

These preparation steps do take quite a while to complete, now we have all the ingredients ready to cook

1. saute the garlic
   • start with a cold pan
   • add the extra virgin olive oil, add the garlic chops, turn on to low heat, let it slowly saute till fragrant
   • this is the very important step of making tomato sauce, garlic is such a compliment to tomato flavor, slowly sautue, don’t burn the garlic
2. cook onion and basil puree
   • when the garlic is about to turn a little bit brown, you feel the wonderful garlic fragrant, add the onion and basil puree, cook it until the onion can be seen through
3. cook tomato sauce
   • add tomato puree and tomato juice into the pan, turn up the heat and let it boiled
   • when it starts boiling, add the bay leafs, turn to low heat again, give it 30 – 45 minutes to stew
4. season the sauce
   • when the liquid is reduced, the sauce is thicken, season the sauce with sea salt and black pepper, then the sauce is done!
5. one more add-on
   • the sauce can be freshly served or used for other dishes, it’s very delicious.
   • moreover, I prefer having it cooled down overnight, and boil it again the next day, like curry dishes, overnight tomato sauce is more flavorous