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Now that it's winter, here in Slovenia, tomatoes aren't really tasty. They've watery, they may be vividly red, but common sense tells us, that good tomatoes come in the summer time only. And in the summer time they come in spades. 

There are a lot of things that you can do with tomatoes, the easiest and by far the most useful one is this one. It can be used as pizza sauce, pasta sauce, the base of a good goulash soup (at least in my opinion). You get the idea. All you need is some good quality tomatoes, locally grown if possible, so you know what you get, and extra virgin olive oil. The better the ingredients the better the sauce. 

Ingredients:

- about a kilo of ripe tomatoes

- 2 tablespoons of good quality olive oil

- 2 cloves of garlic

- 10 leaves of basil

The how-to:

Take a saucepan and put it on high heat to make it really warm. Before putting the olive oil in it lower the heat. Squash the garlic, put it in the pan, just for a couple of seconds so the ends get a little brown. Put the tomatoes in the pan.

Personally I prefer the tomatoes peeled before I cook them. When really ripe, the skin can easily be peeled off; if they are not the ripest just peel then under hot water. Different recipes I've read however state that peeling is not necessary. It is a matter of personal preference. Both work just fine.

Turn occasionally in let it simmer on low heat for an hour or so with the lid on. The tomatoes will degrade into a lovely sauce, but some parts will still be intact, which makes the sauce perfect, so it's not like ketchup.

In the end, cut the basil leaves up and put them in the sauce. Now you either use the sauce straight away or you can wait until it cools down and put in a jar to store in the fridge. 

The sauce was made in august 2015. It just took me a while to upload the recipe. Work and lack of inspiration an' all that.

SLO

Pozimi v Sloveniji ni moč dobiti okusnih paradižnikov. So vodeni, in čeprav živo rdeči, že po logiki je jasno, da ta dobre dobimo le poleti.

Iz paradižnikov se da narediti mnogo stvari, najenostavnejša in najbolj vsestranska pa je ta omaka. Uporabimo jo lahko kot omako za pico, kot omako za pašto, in, vsaj zame, kot osnovo za dober gulaž.

Mislim, da vidite kam pes taco moli. Kar potrebujemo je kvalitetne paradižnike, najboljše direktno od kmetovalca in dobro ekstra deviško olivno olje. Boljše sestavine dajo boljši končni produkt.

Kaj potrebujemo?

- cca kilo zrelih paradižnikov

- 2 žlici dobrega olivnega olja

- 2 stroka česna

- 10 bazilikinih listov

Kaj naredimo?

Posodo daj v max plin, da se fajn segreje. Preden vliješ olivno olje v posodo znižaj plin. Stisni česen in ga daj v posodo, le toliko da robi porjavijo, nato daj paradižnike v posodo.

Sama paradižnike rada olupim, preden jih kuham. Če so zelo zreli jih enostavno olupim; če pa niso najbolj zreli, se jih da olupiti pod vročo vodo. Eni recepti povejo, da jih olupi spet drugi, da ne; očitno je zadeva  osebnih preferenc. Kakorkoli se odločite narediti, omaka bo uspela.

Mešaj občasno in lih za cca uro pusti na nizkem plinu, da razpadejo. Nekaj delčkov vseeno ostane intaktnih, omaka je tako 'nekaj za pod zob' in ne kot kečap.

Za zaključek nareži baziliko in daj v omaku. Lahko jo kar takoj dalje porabite ali pa počakate, da se ohladi in jo zapakirate v posodo in hranite v hladilniku.

Omako sem naredila avgusta 2015, vendar do sedaj nisem prišla do tega, da bi recept objavila.