Tomatoes and passata

Tomato is one of the few foods where the trusts effectively agree on the substance and differ only on wording, which makes it a straightforward one to get right.

The issue

The hazard in a tomato is entirely in the skin and the seeds. The skin is tough, it does not break down in cooking and it comes off in curled fragments in a sauce. The seeds are small, hard and slippery, and they pass through intact. The flesh and the juice between them are not a problem at all.

So the question is never whether tomato is allowed. It is whether the form in front of you has had the skin and seeds taken out.

Where hospitals differ

Only in how they name the acceptable forms. The leaflet this book follows allows passata and tomato purée and puts whole and chopped tomatoes on the avoid list. St George's names tinned deseeded tomatoes and purée as allowed. Leeds allows purée and passata and asks for anything else to be peeled and deseeded first. Tomato ketchup is allowed by the leaflet this book follows.

What this book does

Uses passata and nothing else. Passata is tomato that has been cooked and pushed through a sieve, which is the same operation this book asks you to perform on soups, done for you at the factory. Tinned chopped tomatoes, fresh tomatoes and sun-dried tomatoes do not appear anywhere.

Read the bottle. Some passata is sold rustica or with basil, which means it is coarser or has leaf in it. What you want is a plain, smooth, sieved passata with tomatoes and salt on the label and nothing else.

What you should do

Very little. This is one of the safer corners of the diet. If you want a tomato sauce that tastes of more than tomato, the answer is not skins and seeds but time, butter, garlic cooked soft, a pinch of sugar and a bay leaf infused and lifted out. If your team has told you to leave tomato out entirely for reasons of acidity rather than fibre, which happens with a sore mouth or reflux, that instruction stands over this page.