The Best Tomato Sauce Recipe - Filippo Berio & Cirio

In the "Speedy Italian Suppers" booklet (from the goodies I got from Filippo Berio a week ago), it suggests you make a big batch of plain but tasty tomato sauce (aptly named "Best Tomato Sauce"), and then transform it by adding a few different ingredients to make quick and easy Italian dinners - perfect for busy family weekday meals and surely a lot healthier than the ready made jars of sauce which are renowned for their high salt and sugar content. This is such a great idea and I'm not sure why I didn't think of it before!

You can freeze batches of plain sauce or even put them into jars. My OH says that in his town in Sicily, they make very large batches (using fresh tomatoes rather than tinned), put the cooked sauce through a food mill and pour into sterilised wine bottles and then store the sauce in dark cupboards for months. It also keeps in the fridge for up to 5 days if stored in an airtight container.
I do usually make my own pasta sauces - Tomato Red Wine & Bacon is a favourite and of course the standard bolognese sauce (I usually do the Hairy Bikers version).
I don't usually purée the tomato sauce once it's made because I quite like it chunky or "rustic" however, my daughter expressed a strong preference to having a smooth sauce as she really hates lumps of tomatoes and as I like to try out different ways of doing things, so I thought, why not?

So last Sunday afternoon, I gathered together my ingredients and make a large pan of pasta sauce, almost as per the written recipes.
I wanted to use the sauce as a base to make "Sicilian Style" pasta with prawns, anchovy fillets, raisins and pine nuts with rigatoni so thought the smooth sauce might also work quite well (another recipe idea from the Filippo Berio booklets). I also wanted to have no salt in the base sauce so that I could use it for Marco Baby's dinners.

The recipe is very easy and in less that half an hour you have a large pan of delicious tomato sauce. My sauce wasn't quite as red as the photos in the booklet but maybe that's because I had slightly less tomatoes (I used 2 x 390g cartons instead of 2 x 400g tins) which put the ratio between them and the other veg (celery, onions & carrot) slightly off. I did have quite a large carrot! Despite the colour not being as pleasing as a nice deep tomatoey red, it did taste delicious and according to my OH, smell authentic. Most importantly Marco Baby heartily approved and ate a huge bowl with fusili pasta and cheese for dinner! Must be the Sicilian in him ;-)

The original Felippo Berio recipe is here.
Mine is below:

(Trying To Be) The Best Tomato Sauce Recipe
Makes 6-8 servings

Ingredients:
4 tbsps Olive Oil
2 x large onions, finely chopped
2 x celery sticks, finely sliced
1 x carrot, finely diced
2 x 390g cartons of finely chopped tomatoes
2 x cloves of garlic, crushed
12 basil leaves
pepper

Method:

• Heat the olive oil in a high-sided frying pan. 
• Add the onion, celery and carrot and fry gently for 10 minutes until soft. 
• Next, add the garlic and continue to cook for a further 2 minutes.
• Stir in the tomatoes and simmer for 15 minutes. 
• Remove from the heat, mix through the fresh torn basil leaves. I didn't add any salt, just pepper because of the baby.
• Blend using a food processor or hand held blender until smooth.