Cooking with Jonny69: Real pasta sauce ***WORLD EXCLUSIVE*** with pics

[Jonny69]

Don't get your hopes up too high about these pics just yet. Firstly I'm no photographer and secondly they are from my camera phone so they are pretty shonky. Squint a bit and they should look fine but I've already been warned it don't look too good...

Today folks we're going to cook a real tomato pasta sauce just like they do back home. It's so so simple to make, REALLY cheap and ultra versatile. This forms the base for pretty much every tomato pasta sauce from seafood, bolognese and pizza topping. There are just two ingredients:

Tinned tomatoes x2
Garlic x4

This will make about 4 portions, make plenty and stick it in the freezer.

Chop up about 4-5 cloves of garlic really fine and get them frying really lightly in some olive oil. The garlic is the key here and you need plenty:



In the meantime open two tins of tomatoes (note my miniature saucepan lid in the background):



Now I find the cheaper the tomatoes the better because they have plenty of tomato juice in them and they seem to cook down more satisfactorily and make a smoother sauce. With the more expensive ones I end up adding water so they can bubble down without burning. You can also use fresh tomatoes but you will need to remove the skins and take the cores out, plus it works out quite expensive with the price of fresh tommys in this country. After the garlic starts to go opaque chuck in the toms:



Season with salt and pepper. Now a lot of people don't know this, table salt is about 50% anti-caking agent which is a flavourless sodium-based substance to make it sit in those little balls and run out your salt shaker. So only half of what you put in your food is actual salt and you use twice as much as you need to make it just as salty. Because the anti-caking agent is sodium based your sodium intake is rammed up really high by using table salt. If you use rock salt it is pure salt so you don't need anywhere near as much. Use about this much if your hands are the same size as mine:



Now out with the pepper grinder and get plenty of pepper in there:



My pepper grinder is a hollow baseball bat and I have to stand right in the middle of the kitchen to be able to get it in the pan. Grind in about this much:



Give it a stir and bring it to the boil. Now pop on a lid, drop the flame right down and let it simmer for at least 45 minutes to an hour, stirring every now and then. This is a good time to pop a bottle of red wine and go sit down and relax. The sauce should reduce by about 1/3 and the colour will deepen, the flavour will really change as the sugars in the tomatoes cook out and it should become quite smooth so there's no need to blitz it. Now it's pretty much ready to serve. Cook some pasta and ladle it on top in a big bowl!

I did two variations, the veggie option:



Pasta in the middle, nice bitter rocket round the edge, sauce on top, broke up some hard strong cheese and shaved some parmesan using a potato peeler. This is what I did for me for the non-veggie option:



Same as the veggie option except I used smoked salmon trimmings (cheap) sprinkled over the top instead of the cheese.

You'll be wanting to know how to do bolognese. I fry off a pack of mince in a frying pan and drop it in once I've got the tomato sauce going and boil it down for the same time and it's as simple as that, nothing else. Seafood works perfectly, pop it in a few minutes before the end and you'll get a lovely seaside taste in the tomato. Also as I mentioned it makes a perfect pizza topping.

And enjoy.