13 recipes that use passata, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Zupa pomidorowa, takes 35 minutes. It is most often cooked with onion, garlic and tomato paste.
Run out of passata? Chopped tomatoes, blended smooth.
Got a few things in the fridge? Search by everything you have
Marinating the chicken in spiced yoghurt keeps it tender, and a few minutes under a hot grill gives it the smoky char of a tandoor. The sauce is rich but not heavy, finished with a little cream and dried fenugreek leaves.
A simple dough, a no-cook tomato sauce and the hottest oven you can manage. A heavy baking tray preheated in the oven does a good job of standing in for a pizza stone.
Koshari is the dish of Cairo's streets: whole shops, from Abou Tarek downtown to small corner counters, sell nothing else, and office workers queue for a metal bowl of it at lunchtime. Brown lentils and rice are cooked together, then piled with macaroni, vermicelli and chickpeas, drowned in a sharp cumin-tomato sauce and finished with dakka (garlic vinegar), shatta (chilli sauce) and a heap of dark fried onions. It is cheap, filling and naturally vegan, and every Egyptian eats it differently, so put the sauces on the table. Chef's tip: fry the onions first and cook everything else in their oil; that onion-scented oil is what makes koshari taste like the shops' and not like a plate of separate leftovers.
Mesaqa'a shares a name with Greek moussaka but is a different dish: there's no béchamel and no cheese, just fried aubergine slices baked in a garlicky tomato sauce with green peppers and chilli until soft and jammy. In Cairo it is a weekday family dish and a favourite during the summer heat and in the Coptic fasting seasons, when many families eat no animal products; it tastes even better the next day at room temperature, scooped up with baladi bread. Chef's tip: salt the aubergine and press it dry, then roast or shallow-fry it until truly golden; pale aubergine makes a watery, grey mesaqa'a.
Mahshi is the pride of the Egyptian home kitchen: a big pot of courgettes, small aubergines, peppers and tomatoes, hollowed out and stuffed with short-grain rice, tomato, onion and a fistful of dill, parsley and coriander, then packed tightly and simmered in tomato broth. It turns up for Friday family lunches and on feast days, and making it is often a shared afternoon job around the kitchen table. Some families add minced meat to the stuffing; this version is the everyday vegetable-and-rice one. Chef's tip: fill each vegetable only three-quarters full; the rice swells as it cooks, and overstuffed vegetables burst and leave hard, undercooked rice in the middle.
Torly is a tray of mixed vegetables (potatoes, courgettes, carrots, green beans, peas, peppers) baked in a tomato and garlic sauce until soft and slightly caramelised at the edges. The name is Turkish, a reminder of Ottoman times, but it has long been an everyday Egyptian home dish, usually cooked when the summer markets are full of courgettes and served with white rice or vermicelli rice. Many families add meat; this meat-free version is just as common in fasting seasons. Chef's tip: cut the potatoes and carrots smaller than the courgettes, so everything is tender at the same moment.
In Poland, zupa pomidorowa is famously Monday's soup: on Sunday the family drinks rosół, and the next day the leftover broth becomes tomato soup with rice or thin noodles and a swirl of soured cream. Children across the country rank it as their favourite school-canteen dish. It is creamy, mild and a little sweet, nothing like a spicy Mediterranean tomato soup. This version starts from vegetable stock (the traditional base is chicken broth) and builds the flavour with carrot, celery root and tomato paste fried in butter. Serve it with rice cooked in the pot or with makaron (fine noodles). Chef's tip: fry the tomato paste in butter until it darkens one shade; raw paste tastes tinny and that one minute makes the soup taste like it simmered for hours.
Gołąbki, little doves, are cabbage leaves rolled around a filling and baked in sauce, and they turn up at name-day parties, weddings and Sunday dinners all over Poland. The best-known filling is pork and rice, but in the east, around Lublin and Podlasie, gołąbki filled with kasza gryczana (toasted buckwheat) and mushrooms are an old meatless version, often made for Christmas Eve and Lent. This one is fully plant-based: nutty buckwheat, fried onion and mushrooms, wrapped in soft cabbage and baked in a sweet-sour tomato sauce. They taste even better reheated the next day. Chef's tip: shave down the thick central rib of each leaf with a small knife; it lets the leaf roll tightly without cracking.
Pastitsio is the dish Greek mothers make for big Sunday lunches and christenings, and the one every Athens taverna keeps warm in a deep tray at lunchtime. Long tubular pasta is layered with a beef and tomato sauce scented with cinnamon and allspice, then topped with a deep, wobbly béchamel that bakes to a golden crust. Cut it into neat squares once it has rested and serve with a green salad. Chef's tip: let it rest for at least 30 minutes after baking; cut hot, it slumps, but rested it slices into clean layers.
The francesinha ('little French girl') belongs to Porto, where it was dreamed up in the 1950s by a cook inspired by the croque monsieur, and it is now the city's famous late-night and match-day meal. This sandwich contains pork: thick bread is layered with steak, ham and fresh sausage, covered in cheese slices, then drowned in a spicy tomato sauce made with beer and port-style fortified wine. For an alcohol-free sauce, use alcohol-free beer, or beef stock with a teaspoon of honey. Serve with chips and a fried egg on top if you dare. Chef's tip: simmer the sauce for at least 20 minutes and blend it smooth; it should be thick enough to cling, not run off.
Despite the name, this has nothing to do with Naples: it was invented in Buenos Aires in the 1940s at a restaurant called Nápoli, near the Luna Park stadium. A crisp milanesa is topped with tomato sauce, a slice of ham and plenty of mozzarella, then grilled until the cheese bubbles. It is a pork-and-beef dish, because of the ham. Porteños order it at the corner bodegón with a mountain of chips, one plate often shared by two. The common mistake is spooning on too much sauce, which turns the crumb soggy; a thin layer is enough. Chef's tip: fry the milanesas a minute less than usual, since they finish cooking under the grill, and keep the sauce thick.
Bamia is on every Egyptian family table from Alexandria to Aswan, usually on a weekday with a plate of vermicelli rice. Chunks of lamb on the bone are simmered until tender, then baby okra is cooked in the rich tomato broth with garlic fried in ghee and fresh coriander, a finish called the ta'leya. The sauce is loose, sweet-sour and silky. The common mistake is cutting the okra pods open before cooking, which lets out the slime; trim only the very top of each cap. Chef's tip: fry the okra briefly in a hot pan before it goes into the stew so it holds its shape and stays bright green.
This is a pork dish. Currywurst was born in post-war Berlin, and today kiosks across the city sell it all day and long into the night, on a little paper tray with a wooden fork. A fried pork sausage is cut into bite-size pieces and drowned in a warm, tangy tomato sauce spiced with curry powder, then dusted with more curry powder and served with chips or a bread roll. The sauce is homemade here, so it has no brand of ketchup in it. The usual mistake is cooking the sausages too hot, so they split and burn outside while staying raw inside. Chef's tip: let the sauce simmer a full 10 minutes; the curry powder needs that time to lose its raw, dusty taste.
