When flavorful fresh tomatoes aren't available, our ripe tomato passata is here to step in. Much more than your everyday tomato puree, passata is made with fresh tomatoes instead of cooked, giving it an elegant lightness of flavor and texture. It's as if you had freshly grated, peak-of-summer tomatoes at your fingertips all year round. Passata is one of the building blocks of the Italian pantry — rather than premade sauces or sickly-sweet purees, Italian home cooks rely on passata for quick pasta sauces, soups, and braises. With a can of passata on hand, you're never far from a delicious meal that sings with pure tomato flavor. The plum tomatoes used to make this passata are grown in the fertile Piana del Sele in Salerno, in Italy's southeast. As they bask in the heat of the southern sun, the sugars in the fruit become super concentrated. The result is intensely flavorful tomatoes, which are processed as soon as they're harvested at low temperatures to preserve their freshness and nutritional properties.
