Tomato sauce?

[CatPoet]

I do buy fresh tomatoes and I have Little Tom trying  to  grown on my balcony but canned, I only go for Mutti.

 

Huiray,  We make proper Indian  food ( have Indian friends),  Anglo curries  and   sometimes Swedish curried sausage.  I roast and grind all the spices my self.  The reason for wanting to try the Kema with tomato was  that  I make  hot pocket/ pirogi / pasty/ samosas  in the summer  for picnics and I just wanted spice it up.  The curry ones we have had is a bit of  dry and the kid doesnt like  too dry and I am bit tired of the samosas I been making.

[Mjx]

If you just want to add tomato flavour to something that doesn't traditionally feature it, and is already highly seasoned, no point in bothering with a sauce, the complexity of which would just be lost.

 

Depending on how wet/loose you want the finished mixture to be after you've added your tomato, just use tomato paste (will hardly alter the texture, will add the most flavour for the amount you use), passata/puree (will make the mixture a bit wetter/looser, and add a decent amount of tomato flavour), or crushed tomates (will make the mixture quite wet, add the most subtle tomato flavour for the amount you use, and add some texture, which you may or may not want).

[ElsieD]

I buy passata at an Italian store and use it as I would in recipes calling for tomato sauce. To me it is identical.

[Blether]

Yeah, we can give you a better recipe than the canned stuff. Like Marcella Hazan's recipe.

 

I feel nervous when I see Marcella's Tomato-butter-onion sauce being called "Marcella's Tomato Sauce".  In her books Marcella gives a number of different tomato sauces.  I've waxed lyrical about the T-B-O myself on these pages, but it's a very specific and, in the normal run of Italian cooking, an unusual sauce.  I sure wouldn't recommend it as a generic tomato sauce for recipes that call for one, even though it might work as a substitution.

[Blether]

And having read the rest of the thread: on the British market, yes, the tomato paste that you squeeze from a tube is called 'tomato puree'.

 

To me the difference between an absolutely basic tomato sauce and the range of tomato-only products from paste through puree and passata to juice, is that I expect it to include onions and simple seasoning, and to be cooked "till the oil floats free" as the recipes say, 45 minutes of simmering or thereabouts.

 

Indian cooking also widely uses a similar fry-onions-and-simmer-down-tomatoes sauce base.  Onions too will moisten your keema.  Onions will sweeten it and tomatoes sour it.  If you want there to be more liquid, you coiuld also add some breadcrumbs to the mixture.  They will thicken the extra liquid so you can retain it when you make up the samosa etc.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Blether (log)

[CatPoet]

Well I have a few Ideas now. Thank you all.

[Jaymes]

I sure hope you get back with us and let us know what you did and how it worked out for you.

 

Very interesting...

[paulraphael]

The big revelation for me many years ago was that canned tomatoes make great sauce. Most people got that memo a century ago, I know ...

 

My old fresh tomato sauces required enough cooking that they were essentially canned by the time I was done. But these tomatoes were rarely as fresh as the ones that go straight from the field to the cannery.

 

The trick has been finding good brands of tomatoes, which has gotten easier over the years. 

 

It's one area where I've looked into avoiding BPA, since tomatoes leach a ton of it (they're acidic, they're cooked in there, they sit for ages on the shelf in there ...). In contrast I use my polycarbonate water bottles with impunity, because evidence shows the amount of leaching is probably insignificant. But I'd like to avoid epoxy-lined cans if possible. Here's a list of companies that are no longer using epoxy linings. I don't know how up-to-date this is, and also don't know of independent testing on whatever lines the cans now. So this is pretty provisional information. 

 

Of the brands listed, I've had good luck with Muir Glen. They say they're lining the cans with some kind of vinyl. The only other food use of vinyl I know is PVA that's in cheap, catering-quality cling wrap. It's the stuff that smells like shower curtains. It's a poor choice for food use because it leaches plasticizers, which taste bad (like ... shower curtains) and have potential health effects. I doubt this is what's lining the cans, but also don't know what IS lining the cans.

[paulraphael]

Oh, and here's a template for a really easy tomato sauce. It's less weird/more versatile than the M.H. butter sauce, but not far off.

 

-dice 1/4 to 1/2 an onion

-sweat the onion in some olive oil in a saucepan

-add a 28oz can of tomatoes ... whole peeled ones if you want chunks, crushed or pureed ones if you don't

-optionally, add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of full bodied red wine. I rinse out the can with this.

-simmer to get the consistency you want. add herbs if you want (if you're using anything delicate like parsley or basil, add in the final few minutes)

-adjust the seasoning. this usually means pepper. If you didn't use wine, you may need to add a bit of vinegar to get the acidity up. Very rarely salt ... most canned tomatoes these days have all you need.

 

If the tomatoes are good, this is a tasty and simple pasta sauce by itself. It can also be the base for all kinds of embellishments.

If you want to get fancier, instead of just onions, start with a full-on batuto, which can contain diced pancetta, carrots, garlic, and celery, in addition to the onion. Pork fat may or may not substitute for the olive oil.

Edited July 10, 2014 by paulraphael (log)

[MSRadell]

To me Tomato Sauce is just plain cooked down tomatoes with no added seasonings.  It's something you use as an ingredient when making other tomato-based sauces such as Pasta Sauce, Pizza Sauce, etc.  Very seldom do you use it plain.  Purée is just ground-up tomatoes (usually done with a blender) and if you strain it it would be tomato juice, it's normally not cooked as you buy.  Tomato Paste is basically thickened tomato sauce, again with no added seasonings.