How to….

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… Make a genuine ‘Sugo’ by Gareth Jones


Tomatoes weren’t cultivated in the place we now call Italy until the late 16th century. Like chocolate, corn and Columbus’s other South American bounty, the Spanish held onto tomatoes for decades. It’s said tomatoes made it to Southern Italy with a Spanish chef to the Spanish consulate in Naples.

Cans of Italian tomatoes, grown under fierce sunshine, are almost always best for colour and flavour. Best buy ‘chopped’, not ‘plum’ — and always Italian.

To dress pasta for six: pour contents from three cans into a pan, pass half a can of water round all three to get every bit of the tomato, bring up the heat and drizzle generously with extra virgin olive oil. Crush 3-4 garlic cloves and in they go too — you can also add a sprig of fresh thyme or rosemary.

Lower heat and simmer for an hour or more: what’s essential for a genuine sugo is that you move the pan backwards and forwards to ‘split’ the sauce – the tomato will break away from the richly infused oil.