Simple Napoletana Sauce: a taste of Italian sunshine

Napoletana sauce, otherwise known as salsa pomodoro, is a very simple tomato sauce that’s great all year ’round, even when tomatoes aren’t in season.

Although summer Napoletana uses fresh, ripe tomatoes, you can also make it in winter using good quality tinned or bottled tomatoes. It’s a recipe you can whip up in 10 minutes and it’s perfect either on its own or served on top of delicious home-made gnocchi, such as I learned to make in Italy at at the wonderful Nido Degli Dei, a family owned and run B&B set along the clifftops high above the Amalfi Coast, south of Naples.

It’s a bonus if you have an Italian family that bottles its own at the end of long hot summers. If you don’t, choose good quality, preferably Italian canned or bottled tomatoes and the sauce is halfway there!

You can read all about the gnocchi making experience in my post:
Potato Gnocchi – pillowy, perfect and from Italy with Love.

Now, back to Napoletana

In Italy, we had the fresh gnocchi simply served with a sauce made from Gabriella’s bottled tomatoes, lightly kissed with garlic. I can’t recall onion being added, but I like a finely chopped onion in mine. You can also add chilli for a hint of heat, but hold back on that.

Gabriella cooked sparingly with garlic. In fact, it was never left in the food, but used to flavour the oil. To do this, she simply peeled garlic cloves and threw them whole into the warmed olive oil. She tossed them in the oil until they just started to brown, then removed them and they were discarded. The rest of the ingredients followed from that step. You could do this with chilli as well, just to lightly season the oil, but not leaving a blast of chilli to eat your way through.

Using fresh tomatoes

If making the sauce with fresh tomatoes, make sure you peel them: best done by cutting a cross through the skin at the stem end, then immersing them into boiling water for about a minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to a bowl filled with iced water to stop the tomatoes cooking. Starting with the X-cut end, the skins should peel off easily. Once done, cut in half, scoop out the seeds and chop finely or blitz in a food processor. They’re now ready to use.

Enough talk. Let’s cook Napoletana!

Simple Napoletana Sauce: a taste of Italy

Recipe by Marti CuattCourse: MainCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Easy

Servings

4

servings

Prep time

10

minutes

Cooking time

20

minutes

This easy Napoletana sauce is a simple, quick and delicious taste of Italy you can make at home.

You will need

• Tomatoes: 1 kg fresh OR 2x 400g quality canned tomatoes OR 750ml bottled

• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole

• 1 medium brown onion, finely chopped

• 1 chilli, optional

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

• 1 tablespoon tomato purée or paste (optional)

• 1/2 teaspoon sugar or a splash of balsamic vinegar (to balance the acidity in the tomato)

Here’s what to do

• In a heavy based pan, heat the olive oil until hot but not smoking. Add the garlic cloves and chilli if using and stir around until the garlic just starts to brown. Remove garlic and chilli with a slotted spoon and discard.
• Add the finely chopped onion and sauté gently until soft – about 5-10 minutes. Don’t brown the onion, you just want it to soften so it’s translucent.
• Pour in the tomatoes, add the tomato paste and sugar and bring to simmering point.
  NOTE: if you’re using fresh tomatoes, follow the preparation guide written above the recipe.
• Let simmer gently at least 20 minutes to let the flavours develop, then it’s ready to serve.

Tips and tricks

• Serve as a vegan sauce on top of pasta or with gnocchi
• Sautée up some seafood, such as prawns and calamari and mix through the sauce when it’s heated, then serve this with pasta or similar
• Mix through soups to add a depth of tomato flavour.
• The sauce freezes well, so make a double batch and freeze in serving sized containers to use when you need that Italian tomato hit.

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