I remember my mother’s tomato sauce as a great additional flavour to homemade cottage pies, sausage rolls and chips. I’ve always wanted to create a similar sauce which evoked such familial feelings to embrace with my kids and yet I have failed to do so over the years. (Hopefully it won’t also include the memory of an exploded bottle splashed around the white kitchen). But not anymore! I share with you my own tomato sauce recipe and method to create a delicious concoction to go with any food that requires that extra pizzazz.
Our local grocer had boxes of tomatoes out for sale for the purpose of sauce, chutney, relish and the likes. After purchasing one I then went ahead and began my creation. In one pot I cooked (at a simmer for about an hour) the following:
-
2.5kg tomatoes – roughly chopped
- 400g onions – roughly chopped (I was even lazy enough to throw them through my food processor)
- 10g whole cloves
- 10g pimento (whole allspice)
- 10g sweet paprika
- 1 clove of garlic – outer skin removed and bruised
- 1/2 cinnamon stick
- 50g salt
In a separate pot, I mixed the following ingredients until the sugar was dissolved and had thickened slightly:
-
2/3 cup red wine vinegar
- 2/3 cup apple cider vinegar
- 2/3 cup balsamic vinegar
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
Apparently, this is how you make a gastrique – a French term for “gastric,” referring culinarily to a syrupy reduction of caramelized sugar and vinegar. Don’t I sound la-dee-dah! I didn’t let the syrup be completely reduced as I wanted the tomato mixture to absorb the syrup flavours.
After pureeing the tomato mixture, I then added the two and simmered for another couple of hours until I was happy with the sauce consistency.
Puree only
Sterilisation of the jars and voila! my sauce was bottled, sealed and ‘dressed up’ for a gift.
Good luck with your sauce creation. Time to eat a meat pie!
Freya 🙂
My mother once told me 