The Susanne

This tomato sauce is so deli­cious you’ll be cheat­ing your­self if you don’t try it! It’s inspired by both Gordon Ramsay’s roas­ted tomato soup and my mum’s deli­cious roas­ted tomato sauce. Basic­ally all you do is roast toma­toes, onion, garlic and fresh herbs at 220 degrees celsius for about 45 minutes, stir­ring occa­sion­ally and mash­ing up the toma­toes a bit. Abso­lutely scrump­tious! I’ve taken it a step fur­ther here and used a blender to get that lovely smooth tex­ture that is per­fect for pasta dishes, and also used some red wine for that extra little some­thing. Here’s my recipe for the per­fect roas­ted tomato sauce:

• a splash of olive oil
• 1 kg fresh, ripe toma­toes (halve the large ones, leave small ones like cherry or plum toma­toes whole)
• 5 sun-​dried toma­toes, chopped
• 2 large cloves of garlic, halved
• 1 onion, sliced
• a medium-​sized bunch of fresh thyme sprigs (or any herbs you like, I guess)
• a splash of red wine (I use about 1-2 dl)
• a little tomato paste, to taste
• 1 tbsp sugar
  

Heat your oven to 220 degrees celsius.

Start the sauce by pour­ing some olive oil in a roast­ing tin, and pla­cing it in the oven until almost smoking. Take the tin out and add the toma­toes, onion, garlic and thyme. Sprinkle a little olive oil on top, and season well with salt and pepper.

Roast for about 45 minutes, stir­ring occasionally.

After 30 minutes, turn the heat down to 180 degrees, and mash up the toma­toes to get a sauce-​like con­sist­ency. Add some red wine, to taste. I use about 1-2 dl as I really enjoy the taste. Add some tomato paste if you want, and the sugar. Return it to the oven for the last 15 minutes.

At this point you have a deli­cious tomato sauce which is great as it is — unless you want it smooth.

If you want a smooth tex­ture, pour the sauce into your blender and blend on high for about one minute or until you get the tex­ture you want. Serve — or put back in the roast­ing tin if you want to add meatballs!

So I’ve been want­ing to make spa­ghetti and meat­balls for a while now, but some­how things have just got in the way. Such as the liver exper­i­ment. But today I had noth­ing else on my plate, so to speak. Well, except for the Joyce present­a­tion I’m pre­par­ing for tomor­row. Anywho, after seeing that funny clip of the kid doing the Gordon Ramsay impres­sion, I decided to look through my Gordon cook­book to see if he had a good recipe for meat­balls. There was none in there, but I did find a recipe for tomato soup which reminded me of the tomato sauce mum usu­ally makes. It’s basic­ally toma­toes roas­ted with onion, garlic and fresh herbs. Lovely. So I did that, and found a good recipe for meat­balls in one of my ‘Sicilian cookery’-cookbooks that I got in Sicily. Yea, I got two. I can’t help it, I’m a food nerd. Then I invited The Ex over for dinner — as I know he appre­ci­ates a good bowl of spa­ghetti. And boy, did he appre­ci­ate it!

I must admit I think this is my best spa­ghetti so far, and trust me, I’ve made many. Spa­ghetti has been my staple dish for a long time, the one I’ve turned to when inspir­a­tion was lack­ing and the one I’ve exper­i­mented with the most. Always with tomato sauce, by the way. Ser­i­ously, though, I don’t think I’ll need to exper­i­ment any fur­ther. This was abso­lutely scrump­tious! The sauce tasted divine, which I put down to the roast­ing. Roas­ted veget­ables just seem to have that extra little bam! about them. Will def­in­itely keep making tomato sauce this way — thanks mum and Gordon! The meat­balls were fant­astic: tasty, moist, and incred­ibly fla­vour­ful. Mmmmm! I’ll post the recipe for both the sauce and the meat­balls on the recipes page as soon as I get around to it. No time today — must pre­pare for my presentation!

First a happy sur­prise: last night mum bought tick­ets to Sicilia for The Sister and I! We leave on Tues­day and will be gone for a week. It still hasn’t really sunk in yet, in fact it feels like a bad case of morn­ing after anxi­ety. Like I was very drunk last night and may not be remem­ber­ing things cor­rectly. But it is true, we are going. Yey! I’ve never been to Sicilia before, nor to Italy at all, and I’m well excited! Will be bring­ing the camera but no com­puter, so there will most likely be about ten new posts up all at once in about two weeks time.. I’m excited to see some of the castles and things from medi­eval times. And the beaches, of course. And I can’t wait to sample the food! Ohhh my good­ness. My mouth is water­ing just at the thought of it!

Speak­ing of food — I woke up this morn­ing crav­ing scones. Now, that is itself is weird on sev­eral levels as 1) I don’t think I’ve ever actu­ally had scones before and 2) scones are made with loads of butter and milk, and thus inev­it­ably make me sick. But I scoured the inter­net for a simple recipe and found one at Smit­ten Kit­chen, and then I set to work. I’m not sure how the dough was sup­posed to be before cook­ing but I do have a feel­ing mine was a little runny. Well, maybe not runny but it was def­in­itely not dry and as soon as I got the scones in the oven they seemed to melt a little. And I know for sure that scones are sup­posed to be much higher than mine, which in fact turned out more like scone cook­ies. But they still tasted divine. Mmmm… I only man­aged one before my stom­ach felt like it was throw­ing some sort of satanic party and I was the guest of honour (read: sac­ri­fice) and I had to capit­u­late. But, it was worth it. It was so light and fluffy and deli­cious, lovely and crumbly yet moist at the same time. I had mine with straw­berry jam and it was simply per­fect. No wonder I craved it…