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Nancy Silverton’s Passata di Pomodoro: Rich, Simple and Delightfully Tasty Tomato Sauce

Tomatoes, salt, sugar, pepper, olive oil and some time on the stove top are all you need to make world-renowned chef, Nancy Silverton’s delightfully simple and surprisingly rich passata di pomodoro. Nancy is a world-renowned chef and lover of Italian cooking and cuisine and if you’ve never tried her food before, consider this your sweet and tasty introduction.
“Passata comes from the word passare, which means ‘to pass’ in Italian and passata di pomodoro, often referred to as passata, is the name given to tomatoes that have been passed through a food mill made especially for the task called a passapomodoro or ‘tomato passer’” Nancy writes in The Mozza Cookbook.
This dish is often made during tomato season in Italy (usually toward the end of summer), when the red fruit is ripe and everywhere. Families might spend a few days passing tomatoes through a food mill to fill up bottles of fresh tomato sauce to put in their larder for the rest of the year. Though passata di pomodoro is usually not cooked, Nancy and her team at Mozza cook the tomatoes for a half hour on the stovetop to enhance the flavors and thicken the sauce a.
If it’s not tomato season where you live we recommend using canned tomatoes –– preferably San Marzanos. The good news is this sauce freezes phenomenally well, so you can have passata di pomodoro all year ‘round.
4 cups (1 quart)
10 minutes
30 minutes
By Nancy Silverton
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When it comes to using a food mill, any brand wil work as long as it peels, seeds and purées the tomatoes. If you don’t have one, you can do it by hand — you’ll just need a bit more time and some good old-fashioned elbow grease!
Nancy Silverton
Eight-time cookbook author, chef, artisanal bread maker and co-owner of Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles and Newport Beach, as well as Pizzette, Osteria Mozza, Mozza2Go and chi SPACCA, Nancy Silverton has long been an innovative, influential and creative powerhouse. Among her many (many) accolades, in 2014 the James Beard Foundation awarded her with the title of Outstanding Chef in America. You can follow her @nancysilverton.
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