Tomato sauce

One of the harvests from the veggie patch is a mix of Italian plum and Italian beefsteak tomatoes. I had to share the harvest with birds and mice. It's rather nice not feeling angry as a bulbul munches happily on one of my juicy ripe tomatoes especially considering the harvest wasn't that great. I rather enjoyed watching him and felt good that my garden is a source of healthy unsprayed fruit and veg.

There is no set recipe for my tomato sauce but it goes something like this:

Saute a very large chopped onion in some olive oil, with three or four freshly picked bay leaves. You want to get the flavour of the bay leaves into the olive oil.
Add a kilogram or so of fresh tomatoes. I don't even cut them, they will break down. Simmer very gently until the watery tomato juice has reduced by half. Now add several whole cloves of garlic.
Pop into the garden and pick some fresh basil and some fresh oregano or marjoram. Add as much as you fancy to the mix. Add about 1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice, some khoisan sea salt, black pepper and some organic brown sugar to taste. Not too much sugar!

Reduce the whole lot a bit more until it is no longer watery. Rub through a sieve, or do it the lazy way like me and use a machine. I use my Bosch which has an attachment for this purpose - at least it works very well.
This sauce smells so good while it cooks that you'll want to cancel all dinner plans and make pasta instead. I'm going to freeze mine to enjoy with guests next month.