Simply Spicy Tomato Sauce

As a recent convert to cooking with actual ingredients, I realised that everybody needs a decent basic tomato sauce to use "as is", or as the base of other dishes.

This is the spicy version of my sauce. It is eminently modifiable, adding in or leaving out things to match your personal taste or the needs of the dish.

Here, I serve it with pasta & hotdogs.

• Chopped tomatoes - one tin (400g / 14oz)
• Tomato puree - one tablespoon
• An onion
• Garlic - one clove
• Salt
• Pepper
• Chili flakes - to taste
• Dried mixed herbs - 1 teaspoon
• Sugar
• Oil for frying
• Cheese for dressing

Peel and chop the onion and garlic clove.

You might have your own technique, but when I chop an onion, I halve it, then cut almost all the way through the onion several times (I fanned it out in the photo so that you can se what I mean), then slice across the slices.

For the garlic, I slice it thinly, then press the knife blade through the pile of slices as often as it takes to get pieces that are small enough. You could, of course, use a garlic press, but I don't own one.

Add a dash of oil to your pan, and set it on a high heat (I used "5" on a dial that goes up to six). If your pan is not non-stick, you'll need more than a dash of oil.

Throw in the onion and garlic, and fry until it starts to brown. You might notice the smell change before the colour - as the onion yellows, it begins to smell of fried onion instead of raw onion.

Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, sugar and dried herbs and stir it in to the onion and garlic. Bring the sauce up to a light boil, stirring as you go.

(I don't normally squirt the puree onto a spoon before adding it to the pan - I just that so you could see how much I added.)

This is also the moment where you consider spiciness: I added about half a teaspoon of chilli flakes. This gives it quite a zing, probably too much of a zing if you're using this as the base of a Bolognese sauce or similar.

Simmer and stir your sauce on a lower heat (4 out of 6) until it reduces and thickens as far as you need. This will probably take between five and ten minutes.

I was aiming to have this sauce with pasta, so, as the onions fried and the sauce simmered, I put a mugful of dried penne on to boil (for 13 minutes, as per the instructions on the packet).

I also wanted to have hotdog sausage in with the sauce (don't judge!). According to the pack, they should be heated in boiling water for about 6 minutes, so about half way through the pasta's cooking time I chopped two hotdogs and added the pieces to the pasta in the water.

I drained off the pasta and dogs, and tipped them into a bowl, then added half the tomato sauce*.

I find it hard to think of pasta without adding cheese, so I did: I chopped up a thick slice of cheddar and sprinkled it over the sauce.

I probably should have stirred the pasta & sauce before I added the cheese & took the photo, but I forgot.

All stirred up, this tasted great.

Give it a go for yourself - food always tastes better when you make it yourself, and there's lots of room to experiment around the basic ingredients. Let me know how you go, and what you make from here.

(*The other half of the sauce went into the fridge to go on toast and under cheese tomorrow.)