Napoli.

I first came across this dozzie of a sauce as a kitchen hand in the guts of Melbourne, scrapping and cleaning transposed tomato carbon from the bottom of large pots and Brakpan’s. It was not until I become a fluent pizza dog that I fully appreciated this majestically braised, tomato puree. I consider napoli to be my mother sauce!

Ingredients.

2kg crushed tomatoes (La Gina is a good lick)

400g can Heinz big red tomato soup (most brands are fine)

250g brown onion (peeled, roughly chopped)

100g carrot (peeled, roughly chopped)

100g celery (cleaned, leaves removed, roughly chopped)

2 Tbsn garlic (chopped or minced)

1 Tbsn fresh oregano

1 bunch basil

1/4 C sugar

Salt and pepper

Grapeseed oil

Apparatus.

10 litre pot

Wooden spoon

Sharp knife

Chopping board

Stick blender

Method.

Lightly dampen a tea towel or cloth, lay it flat on your bench, then place your clean board down flat upon the cloth to make sure it is not going to slide around.

Clean, peel and roughly dice your onion, carrot and celery. Mince you garlic. Chop your oregano. Warm your pot to medium on the dial. Don’t get over excited and whack your diced vegetables in when the pot is cold, as that will stew the vegetables and negate all the lovely caramelized flavors that you want to induce through colorization that will only be achieved if your pot is hot!

Caramelization induces flavor my friend! There is nothing more ridiculous than seeing some cook pipe on about how good their flavor game is, to then watch then whack their lardons of carrot or bacon into a cold pan, then watch their product of choice steam and leach moisture before all the lovely natural sugars have time to carbonate and release flavor. Be patient and wait until the pot is hot, then drop in your oil and vegetables, stir every thirty second or so, until the vegetables have developed a golden brown color, while also being translucent in appearance. Whack your garlic and chopped herbs in next, still twice over two minutes, then incorporate your crushed tomatoes and tomato soup. I have called for tinned tomatoes with this recipe, as that is what I have used and pretty well all commercial kitchens do also. If your going to run a napoli from tomatoes procured strait from your garden bed, then be certain to remove their skin and the seeds. I am not going to go over the process of easily removing tomato skins, so just google that one, you should be able to find something on you tube. On a low to medium heat, slowly bring the concoction up to a simmer.

While bringing your Napoli up to a simmer, it is going to want to stick to the bottom of your pot. To negate this process, ensure you stir it regularly as it heats up. If you fell it starting to stick to the bottom of your pot, simply remove it from the heat for five minutes, and your stuck tomato will easily pull away from the base of the pot. If you have forgotten about your napoli because you were talking smack to your friends about your pizza making skills on Facebook and the sauce that has stuck feels thick and rigid, then you may have burnt it. Grab a metal spoon or something that can pick up the potentially carbonated tomato from the bottom of your hot pot, and have a look at it. If what you bring to the surface with your spoon is black, then you’re in the shit. Get it out of that pot now and hope that that bitter, burnt flavor has not been aromatically incorporated into the sauce. If the sauce does not taste burnt, then clean the pot, get the sauce back in there and go again. If the sauce taste like you dropped some charcoal from your last bonfire in it, then tip it down the sink and start again, that will fix it.

So now you have returned from picking up more ingredients, and you have started again, and your Napoli is at a gentle simmer and you have not burnt the pot this time. Now you are going to set a re-occurring timer for fifteen minutes, turn the stove top dial to low-medium, and sit back and stir. You could read some Women’s weekly cooking recipes to kill time while you wait so you have more options than just pizza and parmigiana for your Napoli sauce when your finished. I generally cook mine for around an hour and a half, and I look for a deep orange colored oily residue that starts to accumulate around the edges of the pot as my indicator that the sauce is ready. Once you feel that your sauce’ tomatoes have broken down enough to be considered cooked, and not raw, remove the sauce from the stove top.

Add your picked basil, sugar, some salt and pepper, then hit it on high speed with your stick blender, being careful not to splash droplets of red sauce all over the walls and your face. Keep the blender tip about a centimeter from the base of your pot and caress the sauce into a kind of whirl pool motion! This helps to ensure you break up all the large pieces of product that will not break down without your forced encouragement. When your happy with the consistency, add more salt and pepper until your happy with the taste. As you will be sitting on a large amount of sauce, I would advise you to look at maybe preserving some in jars or even freezing some in a container of you liking.

Once cooled, or even strait out of the pot, use as desired.

#Pro tip! Adding extra water at the same time as your tomatoes will in effect help increase your flavor output. I always fill my empty crushed tomato cans with a little water (1/4 to 1/2 of each can), then swirl the water around and then dispose of the extra tomato and water into the pot. Although this process increases the cooking time, as the extra water needs to evaporate until your desired viscosity is achieved (H₂0 – H₂+O₂), it also allows extra and prolonged interaction between your flavors, producing a superior end product.