Spanish Style Tomato Sauce

So here's the thing about local food. They're reeaaalllyyy good but hard to make. At least that's how I feel when I read the recipes. They are intimidating. One of Mama's cookbook is so old the pages are brown, brittle and tattered and the author unknown because the cover has been replaced with black cardboard. I was flipping through it because I needed to cook something new and I couldn't google because of my slow connection, low patience and time constraints. I found about 2 that I'd like to try when I saw this recipe for a Spanish style tomato sauce. I was thinking more like the kind they have with the sardines. This is totally embarrassing because you are about to discover just how mentally slow I can be at times.

I thought I'd have the pasty kind of tomato sauce that has a bit of oil from cooking it too long. I only realized I was making the kind you can use for pasta when after 45 minutes (it requires a whole hour of slow cooking) there were no trace of oil and the sauce hasn't thickened. 45 minutes! Was a bit disappointed, but the wait was worth it because I've failed twice at making home-made tomato sauce and this is the closest thing I could get to achieving that. Although the recipe called for the store bought tomato sauce, at least you only use about a cup of it instead of having the whole thing made with that preservative-laden sauce. We've been using store bought tomato sauce for years and will still be using them in the future, but having an alternative is also better since we don't know anymore what kind of chemicals they put in there to make them last longer and taste good.

Anyway, back to the sauce. I fried Bangus (milkfish) and covered it with the sauce. It's like a sweet and sour sauce but without the sweet and with a bit of spice which must be from the garlic and onions. Overall it was good. I used chicken broth. I tweaked the recipe a bit by using only enough oil to saute the garlic, onions and tomatoes (although it's EV olive oil we still make sure not to use too much because of Mama's health), I chopped the garlic instead of just crushing and we don't use vetsin, so no Aji-no-moto.

Here's the recipe:

SPANISH STYLE TOMATO SAUCE

1/4 cup olive oil

3 cloves garlic, crushed

4 large onions, chopped

1 cup tomatoes, chopped

1 cup tomato sauce

1 cup broth

Salt and pepper

Ajo-no-moto

Saute garlic, onions and tomatoes in olive oil. Cook till tender. Add tomato sauce and simmer for 10 minutes. Add broth and seasonings. Cook slowly for 1 hour in a covered container.

If you recognize the book and know the author please inform me to give proper credit to them.

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