Magic number tomato sauce

The magic cooking number is 190⁰C fan assisted. If in doubt about oven temperature, this is what you use. But sometimes, just like in life, 3 is the magic number. 

Here is my 3 is the Magic Number utility tomato sauce recipe.

I used to make tomato sauce using approximate quantities of 2, but this leaves an annoyingly small amount of leftover sauce which is not quite enough for another meal. So I thought I'd make one and a half quantity, which also happens to be an easy recipe to remember. 

Magic Number tomato sauce ingredients

• 3 onions
• 3 tins plum tomatoes (not chopped - this makes the sauce to watery)
• 3 very fat garlic cloves
• 3 celery sticks
• 1.5 carrots. The 3 ratio slips a little here as 3 carrots would make a very sweet sauce, unless they were very small. I hope you can remember to use 1.5 carrots instead.
• 3 herbs: parsley, thyme and oregano
• 3 small bay leaves
• Splash red wine (optional)

A very bad photo of tomato sauce

This is a basic tomato sauce that goes with a myriad of dishes. Today I am making a batch for vegetable lasagne so will add some grilled veg, but will have enough to stick in the freezer for another meal. This may be sausages and lentil, pasta and feta, gnocchi and cream, pizza base, white fish...

How to make 3 is the Magic Number tomato sauce

1. Heat a little olive oil in a large casserole dish.
2. Chop the onion as finely or roughly as you want.
3. Chop the celery into very fine slices - some people hate cooked celery so it's best to try and make it look like pieces of onion and deny its existence. 
4. Add these to the pan and fry till soft. 
5. Finely chop the garlic.
6. Grate the carrot. 
7. Add the garlic and the carrot to the pan and stir everything round. 
8. Cook for a further 5 minutes till softened.
9. If you want to add a little richness to the sauce, add a splash of red wine to the pan and turn  up the heat till most of the wine has evaporated (otherwise it will taste harsh and horrible).
10. Add the tins of tomatoes to the pan.
11. Add a little water to one of the empty tomato tins and swill it round to dislodge any remaining juice from the side of the tin.
12. Pour this into the next empty tin and repeat, till you have rinsed the remaining juice from all 3 tins. Pour this into the sauce.
13. Bring the sauce to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for about 45 minutes.
14. Break up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon.
15. Leave to simmer for a further 15 or so minutes till the sauce thickens slightly. 

Your tomato sauce s now ready to use.

Hummus and pesto – tastes of summer

 

Two things I never buy are hummus and pesto. Why? Because supermarket hummus is a slushy gloop and pesto in a jar tastes of watery chemicals. Admittedly the stuff you buy in delis is usually good, but also expensive. Homemade versions outshine every time, and are so easy and cheap to make. Making your own also means you can adapt the flavours to suit your own tastes. 

It’s difficult to give exact measurements for these recipes – you will need to tinker to get the flavour and texture you want. The added bonus is that the dish will be unique each time you make it.

Give it a go – really, the hardest part is washing up the food processor. 

Hummus ingredients

• 1 can chickpeas, or equivalent cooked chickpeas.
• 1 small clove garlic, finely chopped. One of the cloves you find in the centre of a bulb is about the right size.
• 1 tablespoon tahini paste. There really is no need to explain what tahini is these days. If you can buy it in Sains, no need to explain.
• Juice of half a lemon.
• Olive or rapeseed oil and a little water, enough to make the hummus the consistency you like.
• Pinch paprika (optional).

A note on oil

What oil you use will greatly affect the flavour of your hummus. I like a subtle little kick to my hummus and so add a tiny amount of chilli oil (homemade of course) to the Spanish extra virgin olive oil I normally use.

This time, though, I used my new favourite ingredient – rapeseed oil. This produced a deliciously creamy hummus with a deep golden colour. It almost made up for the lack of sunshine outside on this soggy June day.

How to make hummus

1. Put the chickpeas, garlic and tahini, lemon juice and a large drizzle of oil into the food processor then switch it on.
2. When the mixture turns to a pulp, add a little water (or the juice from the chickpea tin/cooking juice) and process again.
3. With the motor running, slowly drizzle in more oil.
4. Stop and taste – season.
5. Add the paprika if using.
6. Switch on the processor again and continue drizzling in oil till you have the consistency and flavour you want – you may want to add more seasoning or lemon juice, or, if you think it’s too oily, add more water.

That’s it. It takes seconds.

And now you have a tasty snack in the fridge and a couple of free lunches.

Hummus for lunch

Hummus is great as a snack with raw veg such as carrots, sugar snaps and celery. Have you seen how much tiny tubs of these sell for in sandwich shops? Go on, whizz up some homemade stuff and take it to work – it will keep in the fridge for a few days in a plastic tub.

One of my favourite lunches is toasted pita bread spread with hummus and stuffed with salad. It even makes something as boring as lettuce and tomato taste interesting.

Hummus is actually quite filling, and so works well as part of a mezze with other salads or veg. Yesterday for lunch I had a green salad with a small amount of leftover roast chicken and toasted seeds, some homemade coleslaw and a dollop of hummus.

Or try some with a grilled lamb chop and green salad for your evening meal.

Pesto

Traditionally pesto is made with basil and pine nuts, but there are lots of variations, such as coriander and pine nuts, basil and cashew nuts, or rocket and walnuts. Here is the recipe for the traditional basil and pine nut pesto.

Pesto ingredients

• 1 handful pine nuts
• 1 large bunch basil
• 1 very small clove garlic, or half a normal clove
• 1 handful grated Parmesan
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Lemon juice, salt & pepper to taste

How to make pesto

I never fart around with the ‘bash using a pestle and mortar, slowly fold in the Parmesan’ school of pesto making.

Simply toast the pine nuts very lightly, rip the basil leaves a little, crush the clove of garlic, with the flat blade of a large knife, finely grate the Parmesan, and put the whole lot in the food processor, then add some olive oil and switch it on.

Turn off the motor, taste, and season with the lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Add more olive oil till the pesto is the consistency you like.

Done. Go on, Claire Ashtaker, give it a go.

What to do with pesto

Traditionally you use pesto as a light coating for pasta with a large surface area such as fusili or spaghetti. I like to stir it through some pasta then add smoked salmon or hot smoked trout with some cherry tomatoes. Roasted vegetables also work well. For a creamier (ie higher fat) version mix equal quantities (say 1 tablespoon) of pesto with mayonnaise.

But pesto works with any number of flavours and food types. Here are some of my favourites.

Fish

Spread some pesto over a fillet of white fish or salmon before oven-roasting for about 10 minutes at 190⁰C (the Magic Cooking Number).

Or poach the fish in water for 10 minutes and serve with a spoonful of pesto on the side.

Chicken

A dollop of pesto is a brilliant accompaniment to roast chicken, especially when served with roasted vegetables or salad and bread warm bread.

Mozzarella salad

For tomato and mozzarella salad you need to use really good tomatoes (or, as we used to call them, tomatoes). Flecked with pesto, a plate of white, red and deep green salad can sometimes be more inviting to the eye than it is to the palate.

Ripe, juicy peaches make a delightful partner to buffalo mozzarella, roughly torn into pieces. A little basil pesto on the side is just the saucy little wink this dish needs.

Fish pie with a lie

I wouldn’t suggest you make this for lunch and heat it up in the office microwave, as somebody is bound to complain about the smell. But this dish does freeze well, uncooked – just cook it straight from frozen for about 50 minutes or until piping hot.

It’s the week before the clocks go forward and I want the comfort of mashed potatoes so its fish pie for dinner tonight. Since this recipe is an amalgamation of several fish pie recipes I think I can safely say it’s my own.

I normally use half fat crème fraiche but today I have some left over cream to use up. As I don’t have quite enough I will it mix some Philly and a little milk to thin the sauce. You can also make a béchamel sauce from melted butter, flour and milk but quite frankly I think this is too much of a faff for fish pie and reserve making a good béchamel sauce for a lasagne. But up to you. 

Fish for fish pie

A mixture of white fish and salmon gives a good balance and fishmongers often sell chunks of this as ready made fish pie mixes. You can use any firm white fish such as the much under-rated coley. Undyed smoked haddock gives a lovely depth of flavour. Today I am using hake which I have never cooked before but ate recently on a holiday to Spain and found delicious.

• I large salmon fillet
• I piece boned hake
• Optional: raw prawns, a handful, fresh or frozen*

*omit the prawns for a real pie with a lie but include for a more truthful pie.

• I medium onion, finely chopped
• I medium carrot, finely chopped or grated**
• I bag spinach
• A couple of medium-to-large floury potatoes (eg Desiree, Whites, King Edwards)
• I 200ml tub half fat crème fraiche
• Juice of 1 lemon

**grated carrot reduces the need for lying but you will probably need to lie if the carrots are chopped.

Optional fish pie ingredients

• A handful of grated mature cheddar
• 1 teaspoon English mustard
• About a dessertspoon of capers, chopped
• A few chopped gerkins/cornichon
• Mace – a pinch
• Nutmeg – about 20 gratings from a whole one
• A handful of chopped parsley

Some people put a hard boiled egg or two into their fish pie but this gives me the same queasy feeling I get the first time I wear flip flops each summer. But by all means add eggs if you want – you can boil them along with the potatoes to save on washing up.

How to make fish pie

1. Peel the potatoes and cut into even sized pieces. Put them in a large saucepan and cover with cold water. Add a little salt and bring them to the boil. 
   If you put floury potatoes straight into boiling water they will become soggy and disintegrate, so always use cold water. New potatoes, which are waxy, can be plunged straight into boiling water.
2. Reduce the heat and simmer the potatoes until cooked – about 15–20 minutes depending on the size of your potato pieces. Test with a skewer to see if done – when they are ready there will be no resistance when you push a skewer through.
3. Once cooked, drain in a colander. Meanwhile, put the empty pan back on the hob and allow any residual water to evaporate. Once the pan is dry, add the drained potatoes to the pan and let the water evaporate from these for a minute. Remove from the heat and mash with salt, pepper and butter. This needs to be done while the potatoes are still hot or they will become too gloopy. Add milk if needed to thin out the potatoes.
4. Make the sauce by gently frying the onion and carrot in olive oil over a low heat till soft ie about 6 or 7 minutes. I use a large Le Creuset sauté pan for this but a regular frying or sauté pan works fine.
5. Skin the fish. This is really easy, honest. All you need is a sharp knife and a bit of confidence. Have a look at this video to see how it’s done
6. Cut the skinned fish into large pieces and put in an appropriate sized dish. Some fish pies instruct you to poach the fish in milk prior to combining with the sauce and baking. This is not necessary since the fish will be baked in a sauce for 25–30 minutes. The only advantage to poaching your fish in milk is if you are making a béchamel sauce as the strained milk will give your sauce lots of flavour.
7. Add the prawns to the fish – they can be fresh or frozen but should be uncooked.
8. Add the crème fraiche or cream to the fried vegetables and stir through to coat the vegetables in a sauce.
9. If you want a cheesy sauce, add the grated cheese and stir into the sauce till it melts. Don’t be tempted to add too much cheese though or it will overpower the taste of the fish rather than compliment it.
10. Once the sauce has bubbled and thickened, remove from the heat, add the lemon juice and any of the other optional ingredients you want to use. You can include all of them if you wish – I often do, except for the egg. The addition of mustard enhances the flavour of the cheese which means you can use less cheese – it is added to cheese scones for this reason.
11. Rinse the spinach in water and add to a large hot pan. Keep stirring till the water evaporates and the spinach is reduced. Squeeze the spinach to remove excess water.
12. Assemble the pie by pouring the sauce over the fish and prawns.
13. Dot the spinach over the fish. Actually, I am not sure if this step is necessary – you can probably just layer the uncooked spinach directly into the pie. I will test this and update accordingly.
14. Spread the mashed potato over the fish sauce mix.
15. I often add another cheeky cheesy layer of grated cheese on top of the mash.
16. Bake at 220⁰C for 25–30 minutes. The top should be a lovely golden colour when done and the smell will be fantastic.

This dish already contains a good deal of vegetables but I like to serve it with some simple boiled frozen peas.

Pie with a lie

Oh, and the lie bit? My fiancé hates cooked carrots. When me and my friend Kerry cooked this fish pie for him once he asked what the orange bits were and I replied ‘prawns’. There were no prawns in that day’s pie.