A tomato love. The perfect base for a king's dish.

Fleshy and rich in flavor, tomatoes are a symbol of flourishing goodness: simple fruits, always at home in the kitchen, in all their countless varieties, sweet or more tart, depending on the taste. Pablo Neruda sang their praises in his Ode to the Tomato, calling it “benign majesty” and “star of the earth” that “emanates its own light.” When we think of first courses, we immediately think of tomato sauce: how to make the soffritto to achieve a truly special condiment?

The secret lies in the quality of the ingredients, which can transform a simple plate of pasta into an excellent dish, and in a few little “tricks” to adopt to prepare the perfect soffritto and enrich your sauce with flavor and poetry. 
 

As Neruda wrote, the tomato “cheerfully marries the clear onion.” This vegetable, the base of every good soffritto, should be sautéed in a mix of oil and butter; why use both ingredients? The reason lies in the smoke point, which is the temperature at which a fat begins to release volatile substances. While butter has a rather low smoke point, normally around 160 °C, that of extra virgin olive oil reaches 210 °C, lifting the smoke point of the butter. The onion, we said, should be sautéed over a very low heat for at least twenty minutes (but ideally up to forty minutes of cooking). So let’s indulge ourselves in allowing it to sauté gradually, relaxed: let it release its irresistible aroma before adding the good tomato towards the end. Whether it is puréed or in chunks, it will have a fairly quick cooking time, so as not to lose its acidity.

 

And, lastly, a whispered secret: add a splash of lemon oil, raw. 

 

Choose a quality pasta to accompany a properly made sauce: Gragnano or Felicetti, rough enough to capture all the pleasure of the tomato sauce. Thus, you will have prepared more than just a first course: you will have created a fusion of flavors, both familiar and surprising with every new taste. A traditional dish, also suitable for those following a vegetarian diet: sprinkle over some of the best Parmigiano Reggiano Dop, and get ready to return for a moment to the purest flavors of childhood.

 

Enjoy your royal first course with a Lugana Doc, pairing it with a Falanghina or a Chardonnay.

Long live the tomato, which “without bones, without armor, without scales or thorns, offers us the gift of its fiery color and the fullness of its freshness”!