Passata is a very simple tomato sauce, but I’m seeing a lot of differences at the cooking stage in online recipes.
Most coincide in the first and last steps: Start with perfectly ripe plum tomatoes, discarding seeds and their liquid, and finish by filtering out the skins and seeds with a food mill and seasoning the sauce before canning.
However, some recipes indicate no cooking at all, others say to cook the tomatoes briefly without any oil, others indicate longer cooking times with or without oil, others suggest boiling whole tomatoes (seeds and all) for two minutes, and a couple of recipes even say to bake the tomatoes.
I’m guessing that all of the different methods are acceptable because it’s too simple and basic a thing for there to be an authentic recipe.
What do you have to say about it? Would you cook the tomatoes? If so, for how long? With or without oil? Any other tips?
For me, passata is a starting point to many recipes, first of all tomato sauce, but also lasagna and parmigiana di melanzane. And according to what you use it for, you can cook it more or less, with more or less oil, onions… whatever. I don’t see how you can go wrong if you don’t burn it.
You could even leave the tomatos completely raw, add cucumber, oil and vinegar (and peppers and tabasco and garlic and and…) drink it ice cold and call it gazpacho.
I made a batch or three last year and did the following: cut a small cross on the bottom of the tomato, blanch them to loosen the skin, let them cool and peel them. Cut them in half and scoop the seeds out. Throw the flesh in to the food mill and have at er. Additionally you can strain the result through a fine mesh sieve if you want it velvety smooth. No cooking involved and you can add salt or spices as you see fit.
Thanks for the replies. I looked for more recipes yesterday and found plenty of variation, so I’m going to conclude that actual cooking (not just blanching) makes it sauce and keeping it raw has more to do with canning. I’m not planning on canning and really just wanted to have a better understanding of the “right” way to make passata. I guess the first recipes I saw are actually for sauce, and I already know how to make that. So, I’m going to pass on passata for now, although I’ll try sieving the next batch of sauce to see how it affects texture. Velvety sounds good!
