Blistered Cherry Tomato Sauce
a skillet packed edge to edge, skins still taut
A pan packed to the edges with whole cherry tomatoes, skins taut and not yet split. Twenty minutes later it is the best quick tomato sauce there is, and it never saw a tin.
Cherry tomatoes are sweeter and lower in water than big ones, which means they can be blistered dry rather than simmered. That char is the flavour. A sauce built from blistered tomatoes tastes roasted in twenty minutes; one simmered from tins needs an hour to get halfway there.
They go in whole and are not touched until they burst. Cut them first and the juice is in the pan instead of in the tomato, and you are back to boiling.
- Makes
- About 3 cups
- Hands-on
- 20 minutes
- Tomatoes
- Whole, untouched
- Pan
- Dry and hot
What you need
The sauce
- 3 lb cherry tomatoes, whole, stems off, dried on a towel
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 8 cloves garlic, sliced thin
- 1 tsp chilli flakes
- 1 tsp sugar, only if the tomatoes need it
- Salt and black pepper
- A big handful of basil, torn, at the end (from my garden)
- A splash of red wine vinegar
How it goes
1 — Dry the tomatoes properly first
Washed and then dried on a towel. Any water on the skins turns to steam in the pan and steam is the opposite of blistering.
2 — Heavy pan, high heat, DRY, until smoking
Cast iron or heavy steel, empty, five minutes. No oil yet — oil at this temperature will smoke and burn before the tomatoes go in.
3 — Tomatoes in one layer, then do not touch them
Packed edge to edge in a single layer. Four minutes without moving the pan. They blacken on the underside and some of them split with an audible pop.
4 — Shake the pan once, four minutes more
One shake to turn them, then left again. By the end most of them will have burst and there will be dark patches on the skins.
5 — Oil and garlic in only now, off the heat for a moment
Heat down, oil in, sliced garlic and chilli flakes stirred through the hot tomatoes for thirty seconds. Garlic at the start of this would be carbon.
pro tip — Garlic sliced rather than minced. Minced garlic in a pan this hot burns before you can count to ten.
6 — Crush them with a wooden spoon
Press each tomato against the base of the pan until it gives. Some will already have collapsed; the whole ones are carrying the sweetest juice and you want it out.
7 — Eight minutes at a simmer to come together
It goes from a pan of broken tomatoes to a sauce. Taste for salt, add the sugar only if it is sharp, and a splash of vinegar to lift it.
8 — Basil off the heat, torn not chopped
Chopping bruises basil and turns the cut edges black. Torn, stirred in with the pan off the flame.
Pasta, a fried egg, a piece of bread. It does not need much from you. LFG.