Flavour Nugget #44: roasted tomato, butter and scotch bonnet sauceFor your freezer! She's versatile and ready to perform
I’ve always claimed I am not a batch cook. Never have been, never will be. Full respect to all my food writing friends, cooks and enthusiasts who’ve embraced it, but the idea makes me wither. I think this is because I equate it with gym bros and macros, all function no flavour, plastic tubs lined up for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday… I just can’t. You’ll understand I was alarmed, then, to realise I’m batch cooking things all the time. Chicken thighs to use over several days, a green sauce for using up my end-of-week herbs, an extra portion of chilli for the freezer. I think the name doesn’t help? BATCH. It sounds so practical. I like some romance and whimsy to my cooking. I just want to feel alive! I may have mentioned before (I can’t be bothered to check) that my friend - we will call her Shirley to protect her privacy - cannot bear leftovers. The idea of eating the same thing even two days in a row makes her wince. A very unfashionable opinion in today’s society, about which she would not give two shits.
And, while I’m actually a big fan of reinventing leftovers or, even better, eating them cold (see pasta and PIE), I have to say I’m not great at eating the same meal over and over. It must be reinvented (or, as Shirley would say, nose wrinkled, ‘AUGMENTED’), which brings me nicely to this sauce. It’s a roasted riff on Marcella Hazan's famous tomato sauce, which involves slowly simmering tomatoes and onions with butter. Of course, the crucial ingredient here is the latter. To paraphrase Nora Ephron, you can never have too much. I wanted to preserve (not ‘batch’) the best fruit of the season and the idea of roasting loads with onions and garlic to achieve that depth of sunshine sweetness along with a little char, well. You can see how this happened. As I said, it’s the silkiness of butter that makes Hazan’s sauce sing, and I thought to myself, ‘I’ll have a bit of that.’ The point of the sauce is versatility. It has high potential for augmentation. You could add cream and have yourself a soup for nosediving a cheese toastie into, or you could add tuna and make a fishy ragu. You’d definitely be wise to use it as a pizza base, and I’d have it on hand for a speedy shakshuka. Yes, scotch bonnet is a hot chilli. Without sounding like a broken record (I sound like a broken record), it has a unique floral flavour and you don’t need to have all the heat! Roasting mellows it, and if you just want a tingle, add one. A single chilli. Uno. No need to go the full monty. However, you could also add smoky chipotle, some harissa, chilli flakes or *gasp!* no chilli at all. I’m excited for you and your flavour variations, and I’m excited for me and my freezer. I even did that thing where I ladled it all into plastic bags and stored them flat for extra space, and named them in big letters with a Sharpie. Who am I? A batch cook, that’s who.
Roasted Tomato, Butter and Scotch Bonnet Sauce 1kg of tomatoes
Combine the onions, tomatoes, chillies, and garlic cloves on a roasting tray. Add the vinegar, then drizzle generously with olive oil and mix well. Roast for 35-40 minutes or until soft. Allow the garlic to cool a little, then squeeze the cloves from the skins into a saucepan. Add the tomatoes, onions and chillies (remove their stalks and also the seeds if you don’t want too much heat). Use a stick blender to whizz to a smooth sauce (you can also use a regular blender but allow the vegetables to cool first). Add the butter and some salt, then simmer gently for 5 minutes. Check the seasoning before cooling completely to store.
SUPERSIZE ME! Use a serving of your sauce with my tuna and kalamata ‘meatballs’; soft as a kitten but a real showboat in the flavour department. I ate all four servings over two days and did not regret it. Until next time, Flavour Fans x
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Tuesday, September 2, 2025
Flavour Nugget #44: roasted tomato, butter and scotch bonnet sauce
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