Provençale Sauce

Sauce Provençale (Provençal tomato and garlic sauce) teaches one true thing: tomatoes must melt, not fry. The finished sauce is a fine Fondue, meaning tomatoes cooked to a soft pulp, with enough olive oil to give it gloss and garlic enough to give it character. It isn't a purée, and it isn't a mother sauce dressed for the south. It is tomatoes and garlic made complete.

The original assumed a saucier with time to peel, seed, press, and Concass twelve tomatoes before the pan reached the fire. A stockpot never off the stove and a salamander have no work here. At home, a blanching pot loosens the skins, a sieve catches the seeds while saving the juice, and a wide sauté pan supplies the gentle evaporation. I keep the book's twelve tomatoes and translate their uncertain size into a useful weight; once prepared and melted, they make about two quarts without stock or anything else added to stretch them. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The peeling and seeding are necessary preparation, not brigade theater, because skins make the sauce stringy and seeds bring bitterness. The long, gentle melting is the dish itself. Keep the heat low enough that the Concass collapses into a glossy pulp without taking brown colour, and the Sauce Provençale will look after you.