There are multiple types of tomato sauce: Marinara, Arrabiata, Amatriciana, Bolognese… This tomato sauce will bring any pasta, rice or pizza to life – promised.

The recipe here is a tomato sauce based on the traditional sofregit or Catalan sofrito. This most basic “sofrito” is usually made by caramelising finely chopped (or grated) onions in olive oil, adding garlic and finally chopped/grated ripe unskinned tomatoes. It is let to simmer until it acquires a jam-consistency, for about 2h. Sometimes, herbs, a little white wine or a picada is added at the end.

A picada is not so much a sauce, but a traditional Catalan condiment and culinary technique used in a wide range of dishes (soups, sauces, fish, meat…) to give flavour and texture (thickener). A picada usually consists of:

• Nuts: almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts or pinenuts
• Bread: ideally hard, you can use old bread or fry/bake a toast. This helps when blended.
• Liquid: oil, broth, hot water, wine…

Sometimes garlic, spices and herbs such as parsley or saffron are added. The ingredients are blended until they become a rough thick sauce. As you can imagine, there are multiple if not hundreds of ways you could prepare a picada. The most well-known Catalan picada consists of almonds, bread, oil, garlic and parsley. This might remind you of the Italian pesto. Neighbour cuisines like the Occitan, Italian or other Mediterranean ones include similar sauces and condiments.

There are many right ways of making tomato sauce and very few wrong ones, which makes this recipe an easy one for anyone to try. The recipe I’ve decided to go for is an easier version of the 2h-simmering classic sofrito. Instead of grated ripe tomatoes, I used a jar of BUNALUN crushed tomato passata, which contains only tomatoes and works great. I first made a sofrito of onions and garlic, then added the passata with a small amount of sugar. I let it simmer for 20 mins and finally added some herbs and adjusted with salt & pepper. I was able to use it for different dishes during the week: rigatoni, a rice and quinoa dish with broccoli and also as the base sauce for pizza. I can confirm it works wonders in all three settings.

You could make a larger batch (instead of 500g tomatoes, use 1kg) and either store it in the fridge and consume in the next week, or freeze a portion for the future.

An alternative would be to skip the cooking and using the passata on its own. But that would take the fun (and added deliciousness) off that comes with making your own sofrito.

I hope you enjoy!

Silvia