Basic Tomato Sauce

[Nick]

Originally posted by Blub2k for entry to the cookbook

tin of tomatoes chopped
small onion
2tsp olive oil
clove of garlic
1 tsp oregano
2 tbsp chopped Fresh parsley, if not fresh then 2 tsps dried.
salt & pepper
2 tsp tomato puree
1 tsp sugar

Chop your onion and throw it into a pan with your olive oil, fry the onion on a medium heat until it is almost all transparent then add in the clove of garlic finely chopped and fry for a further minute or so until onion is completely translucent. Add in chopped tomatos and the rest of the ingredients then reduce until you have a thick sauce.

You can vary this by adding any meat you want after the onion stage, I often chop in some chorizo or some chicken at that stage, chorizo finely diced can be beautiful in it. You can also add in some spice in the form of chili powder or that but essentially you have a good tasting base tomato sauce that can be used for a lot of things and is easy to vary. Fry the meat in the onions before you add in the next ingredients, if it needs cooking then do it now before adding in the toms etc as you do not wish to boil meat you wish to cook it and coat it in sauce.

[Nick]

Also, if you add 3 or 4 tbsp of olive oil, it gives the sauce a great shine and smooths the texture off on the palate... great for dressing pasta.