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Tomato and Mushroom Sauce
2 slices chopped bacon or small quantity uncooked ham 2 cloves 1/2 teaspoon peppercorns 1 slice onion Few gratings nutmeg 6 slices carrot 3 tablespoons flour Bit of bay leaf 1/2 can tomatoes 2 sprigs thyme 1 1/2 cups Brown Stock Sprig of parsley Salt and pepper 1/2 can mushrooms Cook bacon, onion, and carrot five minutes; add bay leaf, thyme, parsley, cloves, peppercorns, nutmeg, and tomatoes, and cook five minutes. Add flour diluted with enough cold water to pour; as it thickens, dilute with stock. Cover, and cook in oven one hour. Strain, add salt and pepper to taste, and one-half can mushrooms, drained from their liquor, rinsed, and cut in quarters; then cook two minutes. Use fresh mushrooms in place of canned ones when possible.
A classic espagnole-style tomato sauce built on a mirepoix and a long, gentle oven braise. The ingredient list runs in two columns, so read it in pairs before shopping.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe specifies none; it says only to cover and cook in the oven for an hour. A moderate oven (around 325-350F) will hold it there. The sauce should barely tremble; a hard simmer will reduce it past sauce consistency and scorch the flour.
- "1/2 can tomatoes"Period cans of tomatoes held roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups, so about 1 to 1 1/4 cups of canned tomatoes with their juice is a fair reading. Half a can of mushrooms is similarly approximate — a few ounces drained.
- Brown stockThis means a stock made from browned beef or veal bones, not a light broth. Unsalted commercial beef stock works; if using a salted product, hold back on seasoning until after straining, since an hour of reduction concentrates it.
- The flourDiluting the flour with cold water to a pourable slurry, then thinning with stock as it thickens, is the hinge of the method. Add it off the boil and stir steadily or it will set in lumps that no amount of straining will fully clear.
- StrainingPress the solids in the sieve to extract the tomato pulp and the flavour from the carrot and bacon, then discard the debris.
- MushroomsCanned mushrooms need only the two minutes given. Fresh ones, which the recipe rightly prefers, should be quartered and sautéed separately in butter until browned before going into the strained sauce, or they will leach water and dull it.
- Bacon or hamUse unsmoked bacon or a piece of raw ham if you can; heavily smoked supermarket bacon will dominate the finished sauce.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups after straining. Refrigerated, it will keep a few days and reheats well.