Secret Sauce: Wicked Basic Tomato Sauce

My stepmom is the reason I came to cooking.  When we were kids, we had meals from around the world and dinner as a family nearly every night – even if it was a little on the late side to accommodate everyone’s schedules.  She’s fearless – she’ll try any recipe; she made cooking seem…doable, limitless.   Also limitless: her creativity.  I was in my mid-twenties before I realized we’d eaten chicken in one form or another pretty much seven days of the week.

One of my favorite meals hands-down was always her sauce – meat sauce, meatless, meatballs, I loved it all.  It wasn’t exotic, but it was magnificent, every time.  My seconds were always just sauce.   Sauce on a plate.  To this day, I crave tomato sauce on a regular basis.

I have a couple of recipes on deck  that, like the Sausages Baked with White beans recipe, that call for basic tomato sauce.  While I do worship at the church of Rao’s jar sauce, it’s super expensive, plus, it’s nice to make your own.  So, here’s my basic tomato sauce recipe – enjoy!

Wicked Delicious Basic Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

½ cup good quality extra virgin olive oil

1 28oz can whole plum tomatoes

1 large onion, chopped

1 medium carrot, grated

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1/8 tsp crushed red pepper

½ tsp coarse kosher salt

1/8 tsp ground black pepper

5 leaves fresh basil

Directions:

In a medium-sized heavy-bottomed pot, sautee onion, carrot and garlic with salt and black pepper in olive oil until translucent.  Add tomatoes, crushing by hand as you add them to the pot, and all of the juices in the can.  Add basil leaves whole.  Bring to a simmer and keep on low heat for an hour, stirring occasionally.  This is a matter of preference and application, really. If it's getting a bit dry, you might need to put the lid on it for a bit.

Using an immersion blender or food processor, blend until relatively smooth.  Test for salt and pepper.  If it taste a bit acidic, add a tablespoon of butter and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and give it another taste. 

Note:

Using a blender isn’t recommended – it tends to aerate the sauce too much for my liking.  Also, if your basil is super sweet, you may want to taste-test before blending; remove the basil if it’s already on the sweet side.  Finally, I like a little more kick in my sauce as a rule, but I almost always add a little extra when I use the sauce in preparation, so I go easier here.

Everything's Better with Mustard

I get great joy out of life’s small pleasures: fresh jammies and clean sheets, a new notebook and a pen that writes smoothly, a picnic with girlfriends. The only thing better than a picnic with girlfriends is a picnic with girlfriends at a winery.

 A month or so ago, three great ladies and I went to Malibu Family Wines for a catch up and a wind down. The weather was glorious, and the company was spectacular. There were tiny leek tarts and cheeses, kale salad, roasted potato salad and farro salad. If I can get that leek tart recipe, you bet I will – shattering pastry, creamy insides. Oh my goodness. All washed down with some great local wines.

That Saturday morning as I prepared my contributions, the faro salad and the potato and shallot salad, I thought about which recipes I was excited to post here. Very quickly I realized that almost everything that came to mind involved mustard somehow. I apparently have an immense love for the stuff – a quick count of the fridge yielded no fewer than six kinds of mustard, plus three more in the pantry, including both Colman’s mustard powder and the paste version in the tube.  When we grill sausages, I use it as an excuse to consume obscene amounts of Dijon.  It becomes a side dish in itself.

One of my absolute favorite kitchen tips, which was a tip from Dorie Greenspan, most likely from her website, is mustard-related (don’t toss that mustard jar, use the last bits by making a vinaigrette right in the jar! GENIUS!). I did a little search and came up with a few recipes for mustard and I’m taking a stab at it. In a couple of days, there might be mustard – stay tuned! I’ll have the recipes for the faro salad with roast cauliflower, kale and feta and the roasted potato and shallot salad as well.

 I will spare you the recipe for the banana and dark chocolate chunk cake I made last night, though. It rose disturbingly high and tasted like metal. Yum!