Skip to main content

Basque Tomato Sauce

4.4

(2)

Recipe information

  • Yield

    Makes about 4 cups

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil
4 ounces smoked ham, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced green bell peppers
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
2 28-ounce cans chopped diced tomatoes in juice, drained
3/4 cup dry Sherry

Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Heat 2 tablespoons oil in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add ham; sauté until golden, about 8 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer ham to small bowl.

    Step 2

    Add 1 tablespoon oil to saucepan. Add onion, bell peppers, garlic, thyme and bay leaf. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cover; simmer until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Add tomatoes and Sherry. Bring to simmer. Cover partially; simmer over medium heat until mixture thickens slightly, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes. Discard bay leaf. Stir in ham. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover; chill. Bring to simmer before using).

Read More
This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.
This marinara sauce is great tossed with any pasta for a quick and easy weeknight dinner that will leave you thinking, “Why didn’t anyone try this sooner?”
Caramelized onions, melty Gruyère, and a deeply savory broth deliver the kind of comfort that doesn’t need improving.
Salmoriglio is a Mediterranean sauce with herbs, garlic, and olive oil. In this version, kelp is used as the base of the sauce.
This sauce is slightly magical. The texture cloaks pasta much like a traditional meat sauce does, and the flavors are deep and rich, but it’s actually vegan!
An ex-boyfriend’s mom—who emigrated from Colombia—made the best meat sauce—she would fry sofrito for the base and simply add cooked ground beef, sazón, and jarred tomato sauce. My version is a bit more bougie—it calls for caramelized tomato paste and white wine—but the result is just as good.
This pasta has some really big energy about it. It’s so extra, it’s the type of thing you should be eating in your bikini while drinking a magnum of rosé, not in Hebden Bridge (or wherever you live), but on a beach on Mykonos.
This vegan version of the classic North African scramble uses soft silken tofu instead of eggs without any sacrifice of flavor.