Tomato Passata
£3.75
Passata
Fano, Pesaro.
Sabina Pesci and Michele Nardella have a tomato farm in northern Marche. From June to September a steady stream of the freshly picked fruit are taken to the stable of the old farmhouse which has been transformed into a bright white kitchen. There the tomatoes are plunged into boiling water, drained to get rid of their watery juices and put through a metre-wide mill to separate the skins from the passata, a thick, dense sauce that contains 2.5kg of tomatoes in every 500ml bottle. After bottling with a big plastic jug it is ready to go; the whole process from picking to pasteurisation taking rarely over an hour. They farm organically on a 3 year cycle of crop rotation and grow a variety of low yielding plum tomato. The seedlings come from Puglia and their main fear is that the nursery will stop seeding such an unproductive fruit, however fabulous the flavour
Datterini Passata
£7.50