Tomatoes: Spanish Tomato Sauce

I have been calling this sauce salmorejo for as long as I’ve been making it, but as I no longer remember where I saw the recipe or how far I’ve strayed from it I’ve decided to drop the fancy moniker. But it’s definitely Spanish-inspired and slightly piquant and it’s for serving cold with tuna, fishcakes, aubergines, pork, spicy sausages and any number of other things. It’s also useful in cooking – with rabbit, for example.

500g large, flavoursome tomatoes 2 red peppers or two roast red peppers from a jar 100g of pain de campagne (or similar), crusts removed and roughly torn up 40g onion, chopped 1 small garlic clove, chopped ½ tsp sweet smoked paprika ½ tsp sugar 1 tbsp best-quality red wine vinegar Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 75 ml extra virgin olive oil

Peel the tomatoes. Cut them in half horizontally and remove the seeds with a teaspoon, putting the seeds in a sieve over a bowl to drain.

If using fresh peppers, you must skin them: grill on all sides until they are mostly blackened; put them in a plastic bag and close the top; leave for 10 mins, then pull off the skin; cut them open and remove pith and seeds.

Put the tomatoes with their juice and all the other ingredients except the oil in a food processor and blend. With the machine running, gradually add the oil through the feed-tube. Taste and add more vinegar/sugar/salt if necessary.

#tomato #cookingtips