How can we get a pleasingly strong garlic taste in our tomato sauce for pasta? Is the secret the amount of garlic, or how you cut it, or the length of cooking? Our sauces tend to be bland rather than zingy. The same goes for basil, in the same simple sauce – how to highlight its flavour?
Nancy, New York
I trust that’s pleasingly strong as opposed to harshly strong? If so, slow-roasting would be my initial go-to. Don’t turn on the oven just for this, though, but next time you have it on, cut the very top off a head of garlic, just to expose the cloves, drizzle over a little olive oil, then wrap in tin foil and pop it in the bottom of the oven for about 45 minutes. Remove and, once cool enough to handle, squeeze out the now amazingly soft and sweet garlic flesh, and stir it into your tomato sauce. The chains of fructose in the garlic will have broken down during roasting and given rise to something called glutamic acid, which brings with it that bold umami taste and depth we all look for in a sauce. In short, you’ll have created the most mellow but bold, sweet and pleasingly strong burst of garlicky flavour.
If you’ve not had time to roast it, it’s also fine to start with raw garlic. The more you mince it, the more the flavour compounds are released and the stronger the flavour will be, so crush or finely mince it, rather than slice it, if you want that garlic flavour really to penetrate the sauce.
Not that sliced garlic is bad. Cook it very slowly in olive oil on the stove top, stirring a few times, then, once the slices are golden brown, transfer to a paper-lined plate to drain, dry out and crisp up. Scatter a few slivers over your pasta or salads, for example, to introduce a lovely, garlicky crunch. Keep the cooking oil, too: it will be thoroughly infused with the garlic, so drizzle some over the finished tomato pasta or over any leaves you might be eating alongside.
Other ways to zip up tomato sauces include checking on the salt and pepper levels and adding a pinch of sugar, especially if your tomatoes are not especially ripe and sweet. Sugar and salt really help dial up the flavours and make your sauce sing.
As for the basil, I’d suggest just adding more. Stick a whole sprig or two of fragrant fresh basil in the sauce, then lift out and discard, and stir in a liberal amount of chopped basil leaves to serve. I also love making basil oil, which is just basil leaves, oil and a little salt blitzed up, and drizzling it over all sorts.