Low-fat Tomato Pasta Sauce
Before I met Tom, I couldn’t really cook. I could make something that vaguely resembled a stir-fry and I was also good at omelettes, but that was pretty much it. I didn’t have much confidence in the kitchen, and before moving away from home I also didn’t have a lot of time for cooking – I spent most of my time playing the violin! But now, thanks mainly to Tom, I’m much better at cooking. Tom learnt watching his Mum when he was younger, and this tomato pasta sauce recipe is one of their standard family recipes which he has now passed on to me. It’s a great basic tomato sauce which you can use in any pasta dish, and it also makes fabulous pizza topping. We usually make a huge stock pot of this and freeze it in small batches, and it tastes even better after it has been frozen. And to make it even better, it’s both low-fat and low-cost. Yippee!
Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large brown onion, finely chopped
3 tins chopped tomatoes
3 red or yellow peppers, diced
300g cup mushrooms, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tbsp Bouillon (or 1 vegetable stock cube)
2 tbsp mixed herbs
A dash of Henderson’s relish (or Tobasco)
A big squirt of tomato puree (apologies for the not very technical measurement!)
Black pepper
Method
1. Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the onions and cook until soft. Add 1 tbsp of the mixed herbs and stir well before adding all 3 tins of chopped tomatoes. Add the rest of the herbs, the Bouillon (or crumble the stock cube into the pan), Henderson’s Relish, black pepper and tomato puree. Stir well and leave for about 10 minutes to simmer, stirring occasionally.
2. Add the peppers and garlic and stir well. After another 10 minutes, add the mushrooms and stir again. Leave to simmer for another 15 minutes.
3. Test the peppers and mushrooms to see if they are soft (leave for a little longer if not). Leave to cool before blending.
4. If freezing some of the sauce, divide into boxes and ensure that the sauce is cold before freezing. I’d suggest that 2 ladles is about right for a portion of pizza topping, and maybe 3 – 4 ladles for pasta sauce. Enjoy!
Newsletter sign up
Sign up to my newsletter, 'Take time out to be creative' - it only drops in your inbox once or twice a month, and is packed full of creative inspiration.
[…] ← Low-fat Tomato Pasta Sauce […]
[…] The recipe I used is from Gino D’Acampo’s ‘Gino’s Pasta‘ – this is for the pasta and the ravioli filling. I served it with some homemade tomato sauce and it worked really well – you can find the original recipe for the sauce here. […]
[…] also made a batch of low-fat tomato sauce for the freezer. We’ve been on holiday this week and it has been so lovely to have the time […]
[…] The goat’s cheese that we used for the pizza worked so well with the other flavours – and apparently the goats are fed on mountain grass in the fjords, so they must be super happy goats! You might not need to use all of the pesto, but it keeps in the fridge for up to 5 days, so you could use the rest another time. If you’d rather have a tomato base on your pizza, try making your own low-fat tomato sauce! […]