Simple Fresh Tomato Pasta Sauce

I’m pretty sure I have said somewhere before that I’ll rave about a basic fresh tomato pasta sauce. Well, as you may have already figured out, that time has come! Ready in as little as 20 minutes (though if you can bear with it doing it slower is even better) and with just 4 basic ingredients it really is a doddle (olive oil is an ingredient, sugar and salt are seasoning). Italian house mate has informed me that they only use cherry tomatoes to make pasta sauce like this, as the large ones create a rather orange outcome…so there you go, some real Italian wisdom! You can make a sauce with as few as 8 cherry tomatoes if you use good pasta that the sauce really sticks to. The key to this is to cook the onions as slowly as possible to bring out their natural sweetness. 

Ingredients

Approx 500g cherry tomatoes
1 white onion
1 clove of garlic 
Pinch of sugar
Pinch of salt
Extra Virgin Olive Oil


Dice the onions and garlic (or crush the garlic if you have a crusher). Halve the tomatoes.

Heat a pan with a good glug of olive oil in and add the onions and garlic. Cook very slowly for as long as you can stand, keep them moving so they don’t brown. After at least 10 minutes add the tomatoes and turn the heat to medium. After another 10 minutes when the tomatoes have started to break down taste and add sugar and salt as needed. Stir and continue cooking on low for another 5 minutes (or prepare earlier and turn off the heat at this point, then heat before serving).

Just before serving you can add (though it is not necessary) any mix of fresh herbs you fancy. Basil is obviously a classic favourite but parsley and coriander work nicely too.