RECIPE: Perfect Tomato Sauce

Perfect tomato sauce "for what?" you may ask; the simple answer is, for EVERYTHING. In a bid to stick two preverbial fingers up at the crappy pasta sauce market, I am going back to basics and sharing some basic recipes with you that use just a few ingredients.

Although there are some incredibly acceptable and good quality sauces on the market, nothing but nothing beats home-cooking! So here is my simple recipe for a fantastic tomato sauce that is perfect for pastas, bases for stews and fantastic on it's own with a hunk of bread and a drizzle of olive oil. Even better, if you are like me and never get round to using those old tomatoes in the fridge... no matter how squishy they are, whether cherry tomatoes or your garden variety tomato, then this is a perfect way of making use of them no matter how old they are!

Ingredients
2kg of ripe tomatoes
1 heaped teaspoon of caster sugar
1 heaped teaspoon of dried oregano
5-6 cloves of garlic, peeled and bashed **optional**
Olive oil
Maldon sea salt
1 pint of water

Method
In a pan over a medium-high heat (or medium heat if using gas) drizzle generously with some olive oil, add your bashed cloves of garlic. Then cut your tomatoes in half and place flat side down in the pan. Sprinkle over your sugar and oregano, season generously with Maldon sea salt and black pepper and allow to cook for 8 minutes, before taking a potato masher or wooden spoon and bashing the tomatoes to break up the pulp. Stir the tomatoes well, add your water and turn the heat down to low-medium (or low if gas) and allow to cook for a couple of hours. After 2 hours, add a little more water if desired and using a hand blender, whizz the contents of the pan until a nice smooth sauce consistency. You can use/eat this immediately or freeze it to save it until needed. You will never reach for dodgy pasta sauces again!