Sauce – How to compensate for the unavailability of Italian basil in authentic Italian pasta sauce

pastasauce

I'm making my own pasta sauce from fresh tomatoes but unfortunately Italian basil (ocimum basilicum pilosum) is not widely available in my country. Here are my options:

  • leave it out entirely (so the sauce will only contain garlic, onion, tomatoes, evoo and salt
  • replace with indian holy basil or tulsi (ocimum tenuiflorum) which is widely available – even have some in the garden
  • try to make up flavour with dried herbs (I only have oregano, sage, rosemary and thyme in my pantry) for this option can someone please recommended an appropriate flavour combination of these dried herbs for 2 pounds (1kg) of fresh tomatoes? E.g 1/2 tsp rosemary, 1/4 tsp thyme, 1/4 tsp sage, etc. I'm not familiar with their flavours and don't know how to combine them properly
  • also have chilli flakes so could try making an arrabiatta (sp?) style sauce – does this require basil?

Best Answer

Okay so let me first say I'm a novice with Italian food. However I have faced the exact same issue.

Follow these steps that I've created:

  1. Put a teaspoon of dried rosemary in a mug of water and microwave for two minutes. Pour the water into the sauce. Discard or re-dry the rosemary sticks.
  2. Put a tspn of dried oregano straight into the sauce.
  3. A pinch of sage OR thyme won't hurt but a tiny, tiny pinch.
  4. Add the Tulsi - one handful of the leaves or more - it will be fine, trust me. Just make sure there's nothing sweet in the sauce as it'll make it taste a tad Thai.

And yes - lots of garlic!! Always garlic

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