Try this intense tomato sauce

19:54 - 17 April 2015

Tomato sauce for pizza

This deep red sauce has a powerful flavour, and is super spicy to booth.

This deep red sauce has a powerful flavour, and is super spicy.

Remember to spread it thinly for use.

This will make more than you need for the quantity of pizza dough given, but leftover sauce keeps for a week in the fridge or three months in the freezer.

It's great added to casseroles, for baking fish (add a squeeze of lemon juice) or, with fresh basil ripped in, used as a pasta sauce.

Use good quality tomatoes – cheap ones are watery and can add a metallic taste.

Ingredients

1½oz/40g Demerara sugar

5 tbsp/75ml red wine vinegar

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 fat cloves garlic, finely chopped

3 tins plum tomatoes

11oz/300g tomato purée

5 tbsp/75ml red wine

Small handful fresh oregano

Method

Put the sugar and vinegar in a small pan and heat to dissolve the sugar. Bring to the boil and bubble until reduced by half into a syrupy liquid known as a "gastric".

Heat the oil in a large pan and add the onion and garlic. Cook very gently for 10 minutes until the onion is soft but not coloured.

Add the tomatoes, tomato purée, red wine, oregano, and a good grinding of black pepper. Simmer gently for about an hour, stirring occasionally.

Stir in half the gastric, taste and add more if it needs it.

Simmer for another half an hour or so, then purée with a hand-held blender, or in a liquidiser, until really smooth. Taste, add salt and leave to cool.