Concentrato e Estratto di Pomodoro

Tomato paste comes from cooking all the water content out of tomatoes, leaving a pure paste that, in the best of all worlds, tastes solely of the sweetness of tomato. Le nonne often use a little bit of tomato paste, sold in tubes of single and double concentrate, to add color, not taste, and to thicken the sauce. Choose double concentrate for stronger flavor. Tomato extract is a bright red, deep-tasting tomato concentrate that has the clean flavor of fresh tomatoes. It can be made by drying the tomatoes in the sun and then cooking them—a process that takes three days—or by leaving them raw and letting the paste concentrate, which takes a week. To come as close as possible to tomato extract, Anna Tasca Lanza, who makes her own at Regaleali, her estate in Sicily, recommends using three times as much sun-dried tomato paste as the amount of tomato extract called for.