Marinara

We recently saw a TV program featuring Anthony Bourdain, where a couple of chefs demonstrated some simple recipes. One of these was a marinara sauce where the tomatoes were cooked with oil flavoured with basil and garlic. This method was pretty new to us, so we tried it and were amazed at the results. Every spoon of the marinara had a subtle note of the basil and garlic, ever present but never once in the foreground or overpowering.

Ingredients

• 5 medium sized tomatoes
• 5 pods garlic, finely chopped
• A small bunch of basil leaves (approximately 25-30 leaves)
• 5 tbsp olive oil

1. Blanch the tomatoes in boiling water until the skin starts coming off.
2. Heat the olive oil on low heat, add the chopped garlic and whole basil leaves and continue to heat until all the basil leaves have wilted.
3. Once the tomatoes are blanched, peel the skin and add the tomatoes to a cooking pot. You can either rough chop the tomatoes before you add it to the pot or break the tomatoes up into chunks using a spoon in the pot.  Add the olive oil with garlic and basil.  Cook on low heat for around 20 mins.

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