Ask Ottolenghi: what’s the best way to get a garlicky flavour into tomato pasta sauce?

The answer, surprisingly, is not just to use more garlic (but you can go to town with the basil)

Ask Ottolenghi: send in your kitchen questions

How can we get a pleasingly strong garlic taste in our tomato sauce for pasta? Is the secret the amount of garlic, or how you cut it, or the length of cooking? Our sauces tend to be bland rather than zingy. The same goes for basil, in the same simple sauce – how to highlight its flavour?
Nancy, New York
I trust that’s pleasingly strong as opposed to harshly strong? If so, slow-roasting would be my initial go-to. Don’t turn on the oven just for this, though, but next time you have it on, cut the very top off a head of garlic, just to expose the cloves, drizzle over a little olive oil, then wrap in tin foil and pop it in the bottom of the oven for about 45 minutes. Remove and, once cool enough to handle, squeeze out the now amazingly soft and sweet garlic flesh, and stir it into your tomato sauce. The chains of fructose in the garlic will have broken down during roasting and given rise to something called glutamic acid, which brings with it that bold umami taste and depth we all look for in a sauce. In short, you’ll have created the most mellow but bold, sweet and pleasingly strong burst of garlicky flavour.

If you’ve not had time to roast it, it’s also fine to start with raw garlic. The more you mince it, the more the flavour compounds are released and the stronger the flavour will be, so crush or finely mince it, rather than slice it, if you want that garlic flavour really to penetrate the sauce.

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