Tomato Paste

Let me tell you about Tomato Paste, and why a good cook never confuses it with sauce.

Fresh tomatoes give you juice. Cook them down, press them through a sieve, cook again — and what's left in the jar is strength: colour, sweetness, sharpness, all packed into one spoonful. One hundred grams carries about 104 kcal, 20 g of carbohydrate, 4 g of protein — this is food, not decoration, so spoon it with respect, not by the jarful.

Choose it with your nose and your eyes. Good Tomato Paste is deep red, almost brick-coloured, and it smells sweet with a clean sharpness behind it. If the smell is flat, or if the colour has gone dull and brownish, leave the jar on the shelf.

Some people say you can drop it straight into a hot pot and just stir. I wouldn't. Put it in oil first, over real heat, and keep stirring. Watch it closely — the smell turns rich and sweet, the colour deepens, and it starts to catch slightly at the edges of the pan. Only then add your liquid. Skip that step, and the paste never gets the chance to show you that change, and your soup never gets the depth it could have had.