With the motor running, add the vinegar and 2 teaspoons salt. (If necessary, work in batches.) Blend at high speed until very smooth, at least 2 minutes, pausing occasionally to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula. It's great for adding a strong umami backbone to stews and braises, but it isn't what I want for this sauce. Combine tomatoes, pepper, cucumber, onion and garlic in a blender or, if using a hand blender, in a deep bowl. After cooking fresh tomatoes, all of the larger solids are strained out, then the resulting juice is slowly cooked down to a moisture content of 76% or less. Tomato paste is concentrated tomato juice.Leave the purée on the shelf for this sauce. Indeed, cooking without recipes is a kitchen skill same as cutting vegetables into dice. It makes a good shortcut for quick-cooking sauces, but the sauce will lack the complexity it gets from slowly reducing a less-processed tomato product. Tomato purée is a cooked and strained tomato product.Because of this fact, it's generally better to avoid crushed products and opt instead to crush your own whole tomatoes. There are actually no controls on the labeling of crushed tomatoes, so one brand's 'crushed' may be a chunky mash, while another's could be a nearly smooth purée. Spread a generous amount of mayonnaise on each slice of bread, then sprinkle with furikake. Crushed tomatoes can vary wildly from brand to brand.

Look for brands with no calcium chloride if you want to use them. They don't break down properly when cooking. The problem is, calcium chloride makes the tomatoes too firm. The main difference with whole is that, frequently, diced tomatoes are treated with calcium chloride, a firming agent that helps the dice keep its shape in the can. Diced tomatoes are whole peeled tomatoes that have been machine-diced and, again, packed in juice or purée.Tomatoes packed in purée will always have a 'cooked' flavor, even if you use them straight out of the can. Zucchini Parmesan Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Tomatoes and zucchini seem to be everywhere right now, so make wonderful use of them in this heartwarming dish from Martha Rose. Those packed in juice are less processed, and therefore more versatile. They consist of whole tomatoes that are peeled (either by steaming or being treated with lye), then packed in either tomato purée or juice. Whole peeled tomatoes are the least processed offering.

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