Sauce from the source

The secret to a delicious pasta dish lies in the quality of the ingredients, says Benedict Vanheems. Fresh produce makes for a superior sauce, even better if you’ve grown it yourself!

- Benedict Vanheems

Pasta is always a mealtime winner, but it’s what you put on it that really counts. Sauces can comfort or exhilarate, titillate the taste buds or create that sense of luxuriant decadence. Pasta aficionados insist it’s the provenance of your pasta that makes all the difference, but a sauce will make or break it.

Fresh is always going to be best, and you can’t get any fresher than produce pulled, picked, or plucked moments before cooking. It figures, therefore, that for the very finest pasta sauces it’s worth going back to the source – and growing it yourself.

There are a zillion different pasta recipes, so let’s concentrate on a few of the staples behind many of them. Start now and you’ll be harvesting fresh, nutrient-dense ingredients of unrivalled taste before the summer is out, but with summer just a few short weeks away, there’s no time to lose.

Bottled tomatoes keep for many months, ensuring a ready supply of harvest-fresh tomatoes for sauces throughout the winter and beyond

TASTY TOMATOES

The tomato is the natural partner to pasta. If you haven’t sown it by now, consider buying a few ready-to-go plants instead. Choose a variety that produces fruits packed out with dense flesh that leaves little room for watery pulp and seeds. Beefsteak tomatoes fit the bill, cooking down to give a smoother sauce, while the plum tomato ‘San Marzano’ is widely regarded as the most superior of all thanks to its dry, meaty texture and sweet taste. As a welcome bonus it’s also very prolific.