La Valle (12 pack) Tomato Puree Organic San Marzano 24oz jars from Italy

Tomato Puree (Passata Di Pomodoro) is made from whole peeled italian San Marzano tomatoes, this makes it easy for even novice cooks to make a perfect homemade tomato sauce. For more than six decades, La Valle has been bringing genuine Italian flavor to tables around the world. Grown in the unique volcanic soil of the sun-drenched Campania region of southern Italy, La Valle's signature San Marzano tomatoes are hand-harvested at the height of maturity and carefully preserved in state-of-the-art facilities according to time-honored traditions carried on by the descendants of founder Alfonso Sellitto. Zesty and aromatic, brilliant in color and robust in consistency, they are prized by leading chefs and cookbook authors on both sides of the Atlantic. Long equated with the cuisine of southern Italy, the tomato was actually a gift of the New World to the Old, brought to Italy for the first time after Columbus's voyages to the Americas. According to popular tradition, the seeds of the world's most prized variety of plum tomato were first brought to the kingdom of Naples from the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1770. Some maintain that the original San Marzano was actually a result of crossing three tomatoes (the King Umberto, Fiaschella, and Fiascona) grown in the area around Naples in the early 1900s. Tomato cultivation is centered in the compania region, where the rich volcanic soil and intense Mediterranean sun provide optimal growing conditions. The San Marzano has become the darling of professional chefs and home cooks around the globe because of its vibrant color and exquisite flavor; sweet, but with a characteristic bite. Moreover, the San Marzano's firm flesh, low seed count, and skin that slips off easily makes it ideally suited to preservation by canning. By the middle of the 19th century, the area around Naples, Italy, was known for the large-scale cultivation and canning of sun-ripened tomatoes.