Tomato sauce variations

[greyhound]

Busy making pasta sauce with all the lovely tomatoes like everyone else here.  (I freeze mine in small bags and it defrosts really quickly if you dunk the bag in some hot water.)

I’m interested to know what little twists and variations people may have.  This is my basic one.

Heat some oil and add a finely chopped medium onion, a couple of cloves of crushed garlic and 3 or 4 snipped-up anchovies.  Cook gently for about 10 mins.  Add about 2 ½ - 3 lbs skinned chopped tomatoes, some oregano and black pepper.  Simmer gently until reduced to a thick pulp and almost all the liquid has evaporated.  Remove from the heat, stir in some halved  cherry tomatoes so they wilt into the sauce.  Dollop into freezer bags when cool.

I sometimes add chopped chillies, seeds ‘n’ all.  ;D  Lovely just as it is, but can also be jazzed up with other stuff later on, of course. 

Forgot to say I sprinkle in a teeny weeny bit of sugar as well.

[greyhound]

[Mrs Ava]

Pretty much the same, some I do lots of garlic, some a sploosh of red wine, some chilli, some nothing and make is very thick for pizza topping, some basil, some oregano, sometimes I cube up various veg, like courgettes, aubergines, mushrooms etc and gently cook them down with it for a chunky sauce.  Mmmmmm.

[Moggle]

A couple of my favourite variations are:

Tomato and bacon - add some chopped, smoked bacon at the end of your onion cooking time. The sauce gets a lovely smokey flavour.
Creamy tomato - a dollop or two of cream stirred through just before serving.
Tomato and pepper - finely diced pepper cooked slowly with the onions, then the rest as usual.
Tomato and olive - add olives mid-way through cooking down the toms

I've got some river cafe recipes somewhere for tomato and nutmeg, tomato and ginger, and tomato and Aubergine, but haven't got around to trying those yet!