Chorizo and Thyme Sofrito Sauce

I've always been wondering what kind of cooking style I want to do.  There are a lot of styles out there.  There's the classic french, american, asian and so on and so forth.

Filipino cuisine?  I was wondering about that too.  Is there even such a thing?  Maybe not, cause I haven't seen one done at a professional level.  I think it's because the things that we cook are too ethnic and too homey.  If you think about it, Filipino cuisine is the modern equivalent of east meets west cuisine.  It was a fusion of malaysian, chinese and spanish cooking.

Still, here I am trying to figure out my style.  I guess I want to go the asian route because I'm already very familiar with it.  I grew up with asian fruits, vegetables and cooking.  I remember when I was a kid growing up in the Philippines, that we had a lot of produce in our backyard and frontyard.  We had mangoes, avocadoes, guavas, jackfruits, soursops, java rose apples, manzanitas, calamondin, kalamungay and a few more.

I never realized how lucky I was back then, to have all those produce for free at my old home.

Enough of my mindless rant. 

Chorizo and Thyme Sofrito Sauce

Sofrito Base:
10 ripe Tomatoes
3 cups of diced Oions
1 cup of Olive Oil
2-3 Bay Leaves
Sugar, Salt and Pepper to taste

Add your onions and olive oil to the pan and cook it on low heat for 30-40 minutes or until your onions start to caramelize.  Your onions should be sweet to the taste.

While your onions are cooking, slice your tomatoes in half.  After your tomatoes have been sliced, grate it.  Save the juice and throw away the skin

Once your onions have started caramelizing, add your grated tomatoes, bay leaves, sugar, salt and pepper.  Let it keep cooking on low heat for another 20 minutes so it can develop some more flavour.

With this base, you can add anything to it.  This is a basic Spanish sauce used in tapas.

Chorizo and Thym Sofrito Sauce
Sofrito Base
4 sprigs of Thyme
5 Spanish Chorizos, diced
4 cloves minced garlic
2 tbsp Vegetable oil

On a medium heat pan, saute your garlic and chorizo.  Add your Sofrito base and plucked thyme leaves once your chorizo is cooked.  Reduce your heat to low and let it develop some more flavour for another 30 minutes.

This sauce takes a lot of patience but once it's done, it'll be packed with lots of flavour.  This is perfect for a pasta dish.

Serve and enjoy!