Napoli Sauce

Due to the large crop of tomatoes I have grown successfully grown this year, I have been able to make a big batch of my take on Napoli Sauce, which I freeze in 2 cup amounts.

Here is two picks I did, one on Thursday and the next on Saturday. I will need to do another in a couple more days. They are slowing down now and I will have a gap between the big Mortgage Lifter  and Apollo plants finishing and the next lot starting to ripen.  I really need to get some into the freezer for sauce. The pinkish looking ones are Mortgage Lifter.

To make Napoli Sauce, I chop up onion, celery, leeks and garlic and 'sweat' it down in some coconut oil in the bottom of my stock pot. Then I added chopped up carrot and some mushrooms. Next is a few sprigs of herbs, thyme and basil for this lot, which I pick out once the sauce has cooked. I also stripped some of the thyme leaves off the sprigs and left them in the sauce. I love the flavour that fresh herbs give it.

 This photo doesn't do the onion mix justice. Unfortunately the flash on my phone wouldn't go off. You can see the sprigs of herbs sitting on top of the mixture. Into this goes tomato paste, and homemade vegetable stock, salt and pepper. It should have sugar in it, according to the recipe I originally followed, but my toms are sweet enough. I roast the tomatoes, capsicums and eggplant, then dice up the eggplant and capsicum before adding them to the mix. The tomatoes go through my whizz to make a puree.





The tomatoes all roasted and the diced up eggplant and capsicum. Roasting the tomatoes brings out the sweetness in them, removing the need to add sugar to the sauce. Once it is all in the pot, I let it bubble away for around 20 mins, stirring occasionally to stop it sticking to the bottom of the pot. The end result of this batch was quite a chunky mix, unlike my normal napoli sauce, which I often use my whizz stick on to puree up. I like the extra chunkiness, it adds texture to whatever you use it with. I had it over wholemeal pasta spirals and added chicken for my lunch yesterday and will have the same today. I use it in mince and chicken dishes. It is really handy to have frozen, so easy to pull a pottle out when I get home, thaw it and use it.

Do you have a favourite sauce you make and use?

1 comment Healthy food, home cooking, Sauce