Homemade tomato pasta sauce

An adaptation of a couple of recipes I found online. A work in progress, but the initial result is promising:

Ingredients:

about 1.5 kg ripe tomatoes (the riper the better)
1 onion, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pepper, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
About 200-300ml tomato juice (optional)
Fresh basil to taste, shredded/torn up
1 tbsp or so Provencal herb mix
Pepper
Some salt to taste
1/3 cup red wine
2-3 bay leaves
1-2 full stalks celery - don't cut them up!
2 small cans tomato paste (or maybe only 1, depending on taste. Should be around 2 tbsp or so of tomato paste)

For the tomatoes, score them at the stalk end and then drop them into boiling water for 2 to 3 minutes to loosen the skin. Peel and core them, then dice them roughly. If you want, leave one or two intact.

Add onion, garlic, peppers and carrots to a biggish pot and cook for around 5 minutes until the onion is soft. Then add your tomatoes, as well as the tomato juice, basil, herbs and spices and red wine, mix in, then add the celery and bay leaves.

Cook for 1-2 hours on a very low heat, add the small tins of tomato paste and cook for another 1-2 hours (I cooked mine for 1 and 1, but varying recipes say 30 mins all the way up to 2 hours. Take your choice).

When it's all ready, remove the bay leaves and celery and leave to cool, then freeze or serve with pasta. Your choice.

Gazpacho

This is a cold tomato soup perfect for summer. Very nice too. It's a slight adaptation of a recipe I found on food.com.

Ingredients:

800 g flavoursome tomatoes
Tomato juice
1/2-1 cup cucumber, peeled, deseeded and chopped up
1/2-1 cup red pepper, deseeded and chopped up
1/2-1 cup red onion, chopped up
1 chilli (or to taste), finely chopped
Garlic to taste (usually 1-2 cloves), minced
Olive oil
Lime juice to taste
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
Coriander, to serve

To peel and deseed the tomatoes, cut a cross into the top or bottom of the tomato and then drop it into boiling water for 15 sec. When deseeding, put the remains into a sieve over a pot or bowl and try and get as much juice as you can from it, and then top up whatever juice you get with the tomato juice until it is about 1 cup. Put everything into a blender or food processor and blend until quite smooth. Leave overnight in the fridge, or serve with ice cubes and coriander.