Tomato Sauce for Pizzas

"This sauce is so versatile. Not only can you use it for pizzas, but it works well as a simple pasta sauce too and it can be frozen for up to six months. But if time is tight, you can make a perfectly good sauce simply by blending a can of good-quality whole plum tomatoes with some salt, , sugar and freshly ground black pepper," Philip Dennhardt, founder of Saturday Pizzas at Ballymaloe Cookery School

5 minutes prep, 15 minutes cook

Serves 800ml (enough for 5 pizzas)

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 celery stick, finely chopped

½ carrot, finely chopped

1 tsp fine sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

2 x 400 g cans of good-quality whole plum tomatoes

1 tsp sugar (optional)

Method

Heat the oil in a saucepan set over a medium–low heat. Add the onion, celery and carrot and season with the salt and some freshly ground black pepper to taste. Cover the pan and sweat the vegetables for 8–10 minutes, until soft but not coloured.

Add the garlic and cook, uncovered, for just 1 minute, until fragrant. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 3 minutes on a low heat.

Goodquality canned tomatoes don’t need to be cooked for very long, plus the longer you cook the sauce, the more water evaporates and the thicker it becomes, which isn’t the consistency that you want – pizza sauce should be thin but not watery.

Whizz the sauce with a handheld blender until smooth, or you could leave it a little chunkier if that’s what you prefer. Taste and check for seasoning – add a teaspoon of sugar if the tomatoes are too bitter or acidic.