This is the Best. Tomato. Sauce. Ever. I use it directly on pasta, or in things like roasted vegetable lasagne. Slightly adapted from a recipe posted to rec.food.cooking by Harry Demidavicius. Do not decrease the quantity of red wine unless you want it to not taste as nice. You can halve the amount of olive oil if you wish.
Makes about 700ml (1.5 UK pints, 30 fl oz)
1. Whizz the onion, garlic, carrot and celery in a food processor (or use a handblender) until very finely chopped and almost liquid.
2. Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan over moderate heat, add the liquidised vegetables, and cook, stirring, until the water has cooked out of the vegetables and the onion no longer smells raw - about 20 minutes, maybe.
3. Add the tomatoes and mash down with a potato masher. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about 40 minutes, until the vegetables are fully cooked and the sauce has reduced somewhat.
4. Add the wine and oregano, and simmer for another ten minutes, adding the parsley after 5 minutes if using.
Notes: The strings of the celery are the parts that the blender will have most trouble with, so make sure to chop across them as finely as you can be bothered to before putting it in the blender.
Kake's (Vegan) Cookery Site - http://www.earth.li/~kake/cookery/
This page added 1 April 2004
- comments and questions to
Kake L Pugh (kake@earth.li).