Making Tomato and Chilli Sauces

Nowadays, I find that chillies and tomatoes can be quite cheap.Because they come cheap , you tend to buy a lot and this can be quite wasteful as they don't last.I normally pick the greenish ones if I want them to last longer and pick the red ones if I want to use them immediately.

To save the tomatoes and chillies from going bad you can puree them and make sauces out of them. The sauce can be eaten with barbecued meat or fried fish or added to curries.

Below are two recipes. One is for making tomato sauce based on a Western recipe while the other is a Malaysian chilli sauce recipe.


TOMATO SAUCE:

Ingredients:
(makes about 300 ml sauce)

• 10 ml olive oil
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1-2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 450g tomatoes, skinned and roughly chopped. ( To make skinning the tomatoes easier, you may blanch it in hot water before removing the skin).
• 15-30 ml tomato puree
• 5 ml soya sauce with a little water
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano or 10 teaspoon fresh oregano or basil
• black pepper
• a little salt
  

Method:

Heat the oil and cook the onion and garlic over a very low heat for 10-15 minutes.
Add the remaining ingredients and stir continuously. Add a little water, cover and simmer for 45 minutes. If you want a smooth sauce, puree the cooled mixture in a food processor or liquidizer. Season with black pepper.

SWEET CHIILI SAUCE

Ingredients:

• 2 teaspoon cooking oil
• 150 ml vinegar
• 500 g fresh seeded red chillies.

( If you prefer a hotter sauce you can mix red chillies with the smaller bird chillies)

• 5 ripe red tomatoes
• 3 tablespoon tomato paste
  
• 1 bulb garlic, crushed
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoon salt

Method :

Heat the oil in a deep sauce pan, add the garlic, chillies and tomatoes. Add the vinegar, tomato paste and bring to the boil, add salt and sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.Put a lid on the pan remove from heat and allow to sit for 20 minutes. Put this mix in a blender and blend until smooth. Return to the pot, and bring the mix to the boil and then lower to a simmer for 30 minutes before cooling and storing in clean jars.