Tomato Sauce

The only mother sauce whose thickening comes mostly from the vegetable itself. Pork fat, a little flour and long slow cooking do the rest.

40 g — smoked bacon

15 g — butter

50 g — carrot

50 g — onion

15 g — plain flour

600 g — ripe tomatoes

200 ml — light chicken stock

5 g — sugar

1 pc — bay leaf

1 pc — thyme

4 g — salt

1 pinch — cracked black pepper

600 g tomato : 200 ml stock

Render the bacon slowly in the butter until most of its fat has run. Add the carrot and onion and cook until they are soft but not brown.

Scatter in the flour and let it cook for two minutes until it just begins to colour. Add the tomatoes, stock, sugar, bay and thyme.

Cover and cook on the lowest heat for an hour and a half, stirring now and then. The tomatoes should collapse completely.

Pass it through a food mill or press it through a sieve — the skins and seeds stay behind and the sauce turns velvet. Season, and if it tastes sharp add sugar a pinch at a time rather than all at once.

Pasta, eggs, grilled fish, anything breaded. Half tomato and half Espagnole is the classic sauce for roast pork and for a plain omelette both.