Brain food: How to make a tomato sauce thicker

Why is the tomato-based pasta sauce in restaurants rich, thick and very tomato-ey, yet when I follow any of the numerous cookbooks I make a really poor sauce? A. Avitable

Being a poor cook is nothing to be ashamed of. To help you with your special problem I went to pasta sauce expert Guy Grossi, chef at Grossi Florentino​ on Bourke Street in Melbourne. He is freakishly passionate about all things tomato and is founder of the Melbourne Tomato Festival, which is on February 21 – details at melbournetomatofestival.com. Grossi says that when using passata – which is basically pasteurised tomato puree – the secret is to reduce it with the other ingredients to make a thick, viscous sauce that clings to the pasta. Make sure the pan has enough surface area to evaporate the water in the sauce and that you give the sauce enough time to reduce.

Sometimes my basil pesto becomes brown and the muddy hue looks most unappealing, although it tastes fine. J. Heywood

Back in the olden days I was hitchhiking through Italy and was dropped off at the outskirts of Genoa by a Dante-reciting truckie. He recommended a restaurant in a seedy part of town because in the kitchen there was a nonna who hand-ground the pesto in a mortar and pestle. It was truly amazing, sweet, sharp, aromatic and so wonderfully smooth. When you break apart the basil leaves they release ethylene – this is the compound that speeds up ripening and increases the rate of decay. The more you work the basil the more the process occurs. To avoid this, don't continuously blend the pesto in the food processor, but use the pulse function, adding the oil in thirds. You can add a little parsley or rocket to increase the chlorophyll ratio – a natural green colouring. Top up the pesto with a little olive oil to stop air getting to it.

I was always told never to wash the sifter, as the fine mesh may rust. J. Brewster

Your letter sparked a beautiful auditory memory of baking with my Aunty Sue and the rasping metallic sound the paddles of her sifter made when she prepared her banana cake. It's not the washing but the drying, or lack thereof, that causes rust on all baking equipment. Dry sifters, cake tins and trays in the dying heat of the oven after your oven is off and the baking is done.

Letters, corrections and apologies

In regards to cooking flat bacon, several people wrote to suggest that bacon can be cooked in the pan if the rind is removed or cut at one-centimetre intervals with a sharp knife or kitchen scissors. Regarding cooking bacon in an oven, C. Pask wrote: "Never heard such rubbish. Cut off the rind and feed it to the magpies or kookaburras." Unfortunately, I was trained to cook bacon in a hotel in Scotland where kookaburras were scarce. We had to make do with an oven.

Send your vexing culinary conundrums to brainfood@richardcornish.com.au or tweet @Foodcornish