a basic tomato sauce
rating:I'm sure everybody knows how to do this, but I thought I'd put it in anyway.
We had a load of tomatoes from Riverford - I don't care for the little chaps *at all* in their raw state, and so Pete was working through them on his own, and they started to turn before he finished them.
So: first, skin the toms. Cut a cross into the top of each fruit, then put them into boiling water for, oh, about five minutes, or so, till the skin starts to lift. Then, put them into a bowl of cold water - icy if you can. We have an icemaker in our huge American fridge, so that's easy for us, thankfully.
Leave them there for a couple of minutes, then remove and skin - it should be easy now.
Finely chop some garlic, and saute that in a frying pan with some good olive oil; while it's softening, chop the toms roughly. then fling them in the pan with the garlic. Add a little bit of sugar - a tsp or so will be fine.
Cook them down for ten minutes or so. At this point, you could add lots of things: a chopped dried chilli, or some basil. I lobbed in a splash of balsamic, but as this is sauce was destined for a moussaka, I left it at that. It smells lovely!
