Bases of Italy Pt 1: The Pizza Sauce

Experimenting with sauces is always fun, though not always pleasant (as I once found out) but there are two ways that I find make great Tomato Pizza Sauce.

The first method is partly courtesy of Saturday Kitchen Live by the BBC. It worked great:
Ingredients

• 24 small vine tomatoes or 12 large vine tomatoes (including the vine)
• 3-4 basil leaves or Oregano leaves (Depends on the flavour you want in your pizza)
• Tomato puree
• Boiling water
  

Utensils

• 1 Pressure Cooker
• Masher
• Saucepan
• Stirring spoon
  

Cooking the Sauce

1. Separate tomatoes from vine and wash both.
2. Place vine tomatoes and vine into pressure cooker and add one tablespoon of boiling water.
3. Close pressure cooker and place on medium heat.
4. Leave tomatoes to 'pressurize'. Turn off heat when cooker begins to whistle. (Sounds like a strange notion but once the cooker is filled with steam it has no other option other than release it through the whistle at the top of the cooker.
5. Before opening the cooker be sure that all of the steam has left the cooker. This can be done manually by getting a fork/knife and, at arm's length, lifting the whistle. allowing any excess steam to dissipate.
6. Mash roughly and sauce is ready to use.

The second method is simpler, but gives great sauce (my own invention!)
1. Take large tube of tomato puree (or large tin) and empty contents into saucepan.
2. Turn on cooker, and set to low heat
3. Add triple the amount of boiling water to tomato puree and let it simmer to desired consistency whilst stirring occasionally. I like the consistency to be a little thick in that when I dip the stirring spoon it coats the spoon nicely . NB: if puree is double concentrate then add 1 extra measure to saucepan.
4. Add herbs such as oregano/basil
5. Sauce is ready to be used on the Pizza base.