What would Jesus stew?

It's difficult for me to share a sauce recipe as sauce is more of a process than a recipe. So I'll give you the process, with one of my favourite ways of doing it, and then it'll be like Jesus teaching a man to fish instead of giving him a fish. Was that Jesus? It sounds like something Jesus would do.

1. Skin, core, and quarter the fresh tomatoes. Easiest way to do this sans machinery is to rinse them, pop them into a pot of vigorously boiling water for 30 seconds, and then drop them into a large bowl of cold, clean water. Work in sets of ten.

Put each tomato on the chopping board and cut it in half, off-centre a bit so that the core (the hard green-ish white-ish bit) is all on one of the halves. As you do, you should see the skin start to slide off; finish the job with your fingers. Put the skin in a separate bowl, cut the tomato into four - again off-centre so that the core is all on one piece - and then chop the core out of that piece. Throw out the core, and put the quartered tomato into a large bowl.

Now, 30 seconds is a bit long to boil the tomatoes to get the skin off - some people only do it for 5 seconds or little more. The consequence of the 30 second boil is that the skin comes off very, very easily, but that it takes the thin outer layer of the fruit with it, and that thin outer layer is where lots of the flavour is concentrated. So once you've finished skinning, coring, and quartering all your tomatoes, take the skins you've collected in a seperate bowl, put them into a fine-mesh sieve or colander - a netty one rather than a hole-y one - hold that above the bowl with all your tomatoes in it, and rub the skins into the mesh. This will push through lots of thick, strongly flavoured juice.

(Hilts, at this point you've rinsed the tomatoes twice and boiled them for half a minute once, and now you're about to cook the fuckers for three or four hours, so you won't get salmonella).

2. Now that you've got all your tomatoes skinned, cored, and quartered in a big bowl - clean up your area. Just do it now. You'll thank yourself later.

3. Now that you've cleaned up your area, prepare your pre-fry. This is where you introduce your basic, tough, non-tomato flavours to the sauce, by frying a bunch of aromatic ingredients with a good deal of olive oil before introducing the tomatoes. There's a world of things you can include here: sliced onion (sweet), diced garlic (essentially obligatory), diced celery (if you're a caker), leek (but then absolutely no onions), cracked peppercorns (bold), dried red peppers (bolder), rosemary (fresh or dried, without the stalk) - remember, though, anything you put in at this stage has to be tough. You will have to play around with the proportions by yourself - I personally like lots of garlic, little-to-no onion, and very spicy.

Heat up the olive oil by itself, highly, and then drop in your pre-fry ingredients. Stir them around the pan until they brown up, or until the onions, if you're using them, get translucent. For a recent batch made with 3 kg of tomatoes, I just used two garlic cloves and a tablespoon and half of cracked peppercorns.

Notes:

-At this stage, and at all others, remember to KEEP IT SIMPLE. The simpler you keep your base sauce, the fancier you can get without crossing the line into muddiness at dinnertime. Limit yourself to three pre-fry ingredients.
-Remember that scene in Goodfellas when Paul Sorvino was slicing garlic in prison with a razor blade, so it was so thin that it 'melted' into the sauce? Remember that was a movie about wankers. Don't stress yourself over the thickness of your dice - just do what you can.

4. Once you've browned the pre-fry, put in the sliced, quartered, cored tomatoes by handfuls, stirring all the while, without lowering the heat. Get them all in there as you stir, and then add some salt, or (my preference) a shake of fish sauce - you know, that weird oily anchovy liquid that they sell in the 'international' section of grocery markets. On its own it smells like a dead leper, but introduced into a sauce at this point in the cooking, it will only add a bit of sodium and, in the long run, a good background flavour that will add richness without muddying the taste. Once the salty thing is added, cover them.

Note:
-When it comes to saltiness, BE SPARING. Saltiness is a very easy flavour to add later, either as you're preparing a meal or as you're at the dinner table, and a very hard one to take away if you overdo it. (If you do overdo it, add a whole, peeled potato to the sauce, and leave it there until it's cooked through; that should soak some of it up.) At this point, you're really just adding the salt to help the tomatoes release their juices so they can stew themselves, rather than adding another really important flavour.
-Also at this point, you have a judgement call to make. Are your tomatoes, like me, juicy enough to get themselves wet? (Sorry.) Does it seem like they are liquid enough to stew themselves? They almost always are, and in any case you will be able to tell about 5 minutes after getting them on the heat and adding some salt or fish sauce. If they look like the risk burning, add some white wine or some clear stock. I advise you to try to get the tomatoes to stew themselves. Stock or wine is best added when you're preparing the meal and can make informed decisions about the taste combinations you want. Again, you're running the risk of muddying the taste.

5. Once the tomatoes have reached a boil, turn them down to a low, low simmer. They're going to stay like that now for three or four hours, and you're going to give them a good stir every ten minutes, so make sure you have a good book. For the first hour, leave the lid on; from that point onward, leave the lid on but askew, so there is a small space from which the water vapour can escape.

If you must add cinnamon to combat the acidity, add it at the end of hour two. Be sparing, especially at first; a pinch should do it. Also at hour two, start tasting. This will give you an idea where the flavour is going and help you make an informed decision about which herbs you're going to add at the end of the process.

6. At the end of hour three, if you don't want a chunky sauce (which I never do), get an immersion blender, or as the Portuguese call it, 'magic wand', and blend. At this point, it's time for to decide if the sauce is about finished; it depends on the thickness you want. Remember that you may use this sauce to prepare a meal, and in any case you will certainly be reheating it, which means thickening it again, unless you use it on a pizza. Your call.

7. When you decide you have the right thickness, it is time to add the herbs and turn the heat off, not necessarily in that order. Remember yesterday's tips: the more delicate the herb, the less heat it needs. Rosemary aside there is no herb that should be on the hob for more than ten minutes, and lots that shouldn't go in until after the heat is off. And remember to keep it simple. For the sauce I made with the garlic and peppercorn pre-fry, I used half a handful of sage.

8. And, you're done. Clean up the kitchen NOW. There are few things worse in terms of householding than trying to clean up from making tomato sauce after all the little splashes have dried and hardened. Do it NOW.