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Ingredients

  • 3 x 400g tins of good quality chopped tomatoes
  • 200 ml of extra virgin olive oil
  • 6 large cloves of garlic, crushed
  • 1 large red chilli, de-seeded & chopped (leave the seeds in if you like more heat)
  • 250ml of white wine
  • A couple of generous pinches of sugar
  • 3 tsp of freshly chopped parsley
  • Salt & freshly ground black pepper
  • Pasta of your choice

Method

  • STEP 1
    Pour the oil into a heavy based, non stick saucepan. Add the chopped tomatoes, white wine, garlic, sugar and chilli to the pan. Bring to the boil and continue to boil the mixture vigorously for 20 minutes, stirring from time to time. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and black pepper. The result is an intensely flavoured, oily tomato sauce, perfect for coating pasta.
  • STEP 2
    Cook the pasta of your choice (this is great with spaghetti, conchiglie or farfalle).
  • STEP 3
    Incorporate the sauce with the pasta, sprinkle the parsley over the top and serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese and a mixed salad dressed with olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt and black pepper.
  • STEP 4
    You can jazz the basic tomato sauce up by adding one or more other ingredients such as black olives, capers, courgette, roasted peppers, more chilli (for more heat), cold water prawns, squid, scallops, tuna, pancetta or anything else that you fancy. If you do this, prepare/cook the additional ingredients in advance, add to the tomato sauce and simmer for few minutes, stirring from time to time, until everything has warmed through.
  • STEP 5
    In my opinion, parmesan doesn't work with fish in this dish, so I normally delete the cheese if I use fish as an ingredient.
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