This is one of those beautifully simple sauces that emphasizes the essential truth that quality ingredients will always tend to yield great results when used to their best advantage. Good quality tomatoes, rich butter and mature well grown onion combine to produce a terrific marriage of flavors in this sauce if it is not overcooked, or cooked too fast over too high heat. Something else worth noting, (and I speak from my own experience as one who makes any number of different tomato-based sauces), is that whil good D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes are typically really really good, it seems clear that over the last 10 years or so the quality of San Marzanos exported from Italy to the US has deteriorated significantly. It may be that the increased fashionability of the tomato type has caused production methods in Italy to change radically and in the process quality has been sacrificed in the quest for tonnage, but many formerly good brands are really quite ordinary now and some have become quite ghastly. (I think the main problem is that the tomatoes are very much overcooked now in the production process and the extreme bitterness in the water from the cooking process adds to the difficulty of bringing out the full, fresh and sweet tomato taste once one begins making ones sauce with these already-cooked-to-smithereens tomatoes. In any case, it's worth experimenting with tomato brands rather than being married to the idea that 'San Marzanos' are always going to be the superior tomato amongst the available competition. Where I live now near the central California coast there are numerous brands of San Marzano tomatoes available in the more yuppie oriented stores. Yet in these last 3 years or so the consistently best tasting canned plum tomatoes I've found are the Cento "Italian Style" tomatoes. They are very tasty, not overcooked, have good texture, can cook a short time and pop great fresh vibrant taste or cook low and slow for a ong time and develop that deep righ sweet tomato taste many of us undoubtedly remember growing up. (These Cento "Italian Style" tomatoes are not to be confused with the Cento "Italian" or "San Marzano tomatoes which are imported from Italy and which are really terrible at more than twice the price.)

• Reply