Alice Waters' Roasted Tomato Sauce from ‘My Pantry’
Every week, Yahoo Food spotlights a cookbook that stands out from all the rest. This week’s cookbook is My Pantry: Homemade Ingredients That Make Simple Meals Your Own by Alice Waters. Read more about Yahoo Food’s Cookbook of the Week here.
Illustration by Fanny Singer
Roasted Tomato Sauce
Makes about 6 cups
This can be used as a fresh sauce for pasta or as an element in many different dishes. When tomatoes are abundant, this is a good sauce to make in quantity to freeze or can. I find that roasting the tomatoes, rather than boiling them, produces a slightly more intense and flavorful sauce. If you are going to pass the sauce through a food mill, there’s no need to peel and seed the tomatoes beforehand—the mill will strain out the skins and seeds.
4 pounds tomatoes
¹⁄³ cup olive oil
½ to ¾ teaspoon sea salt
Preheat the oven to 450°F.
For a smoother sauce: Roast the whole tomatoes in a baking dish with the oil and salt, stirring every 15 minutes or so to assist their breaking down. After about 40 minutes, the tomatoes should be completely collapsed. Pass them through a food mill into a bowl.
For a chunkier sauce: Peel the tomatoes by dropping into boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds and then plunging into ice water. Remove the cores and peel the tomatoes, then halve them and squeeze the seeds out into a sieve set over a bowl, reserving the juice. Dice the tomatoes and put in a roasting pan or baking dish. Add the oil and salt and strained tomato juice. Roast, checking every 15 to 20 minutes to make sure the tomatoes aren’t “catching,” or sticking to the pan and starting to burn. The juice will reduce slightly and the tomatoes will begin to break down, and after about 40 minutes the tomato and juice will blend together to form a loose sauce.
Either sauce will keep in the refrigerator for 1 week. It can also be frozen in small batches or canned.
VARIATIONS
Add a handful of chopped parsley, marjoram, or oregano or a chiffonade of basil leaves to the sauce a couple minutes before it is done.
Sauté 1 onion, finely diced, in the oil before adding the tomatoes.
When tomatoes are out of season, use organic canned tomatoes. Reserving the juices, drain one 28-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes. Chop the tomatoes coarsely and roast them with the oil, salt, and reserved juice.
Add a whole dried chile or a pinch of dried chile flakes for spice.
Reprinted with permission from My Pantry: Homemade Ingredients That Make Simple Meals Your Own by Alice Waters and Fanny Singer (Pam Krauss Books).
More homemade sauces to love:
