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!

Wicked Delicious Chili, England-Style

My family wasn’t big on vacations – no annual trip to Cape Cod for a week or Disney World vacations that went on three years too many.  Ever couple of years, we'd visit a family friend's house in Biddeford, Maine.  I've been there only once or twice since I was a kid, but even just looking at the picture up there, thinking about climbing out on the rocks, the smell of the ocean filling me, and I'm calm.  

We did take one epic family vacation, though.  Hijinks did ensue, but there was very little drama.  We flew to England and drove to Scotland for my Great Aunt Jane’s 80^th birthday.  We landed at Heathrow in August of 1990 dressed for your average English weather, but we were met with a heat wave.   We were in jeans and long sleeves and sweaters and we climbed into a rental car the size of a bathtub with 22 days worth of luggage for four and drove through a couple hundred miles of countryside, smelling almost as charming as the sheep out the window. 

There were only a few radio channels with only a few songs and a couple of radio shows, which we started listening to after the weirdness of listening to Johnny Gill sing “I Wanna Rub You the Right Way” with our parents became too much.  To this day, my family can recall the full and extended – and invented – lyrics to Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner at the mention of a cow or sheep.   We’ve been known to burst into song – just try us.

My sister wasn’t much of an eater then.  She was your classic picky ten-year-old – ten times cuter than she was accommodating at mealtime.  The one food she was willing to order and continued to eat nearly daily was chili.  The first time she ordered it we were completely perplexed – those crazy Brits!  We’d never seen chili served over rice before.

Now I recognize the genius of it.  First, it helps stretch a pot of chili for a crowd.  Second, a bowl of chili is essentially a giant bowl of meat, which is really more meat than a person needs to eat in a sitting, zombies excepted.   At our house, chili is always served over rice and our California living-inspired additions are Greek yogurt, local pepper jack cheese and fresh cilantro leaves and chunks of avocado. 

It’s taken a few goes, but I can say for certain this is now our official house chili.

Wicked Delicious Spicy Chili

Ingredients

2 pieces speck, bacon, or prosciutto

3 lbs ground beef

½ tsp coarse kosher salt

¼ tsp cracked black pepper

1 large onion, chopped

6 cloves garlic, chopped

2 Tbs Ancho chili powder

3 Tbs medium-hot chili Powder (see note below)

2 Tbs hot chili powder

1 tsp cumin

1 Tbs plus 1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

1 14 oz can of diced tomatoes, preferably fire roasted

1 cup (8 oz.) low salt beef broth

2 14 oz cans of beans, drained (kidney, pinto, or one of each)

1 Tbs plus 1tsp cider vinegar

1 Tbs coarnmeal

2 dashes of Worcestershire sauce

A dust – barely a smidgen of allspice

Directions

Add speck or other pork choice to a cold large, heavy bottomed pot.  I most often use my Le Creuset Enameled Cast-Iron 7-1/4-Quart Round French Oven, Flame.   When the speck has surrendered it’s fat and your pan is glossy, add the beef, salt and pepper and brown thoroughly.  Take your time – this builds flavor.  When it’s satisfactorily browned (this could be 10 – 15 minutes, easily), add the chopped onion and garlic and simmer, turning regularly, until the onion is translucent. 

At this point, if you’ve used fattier beef and your beef is wet with drippings, ladle off most of the fat. Add all of your chili powders, cumin, tomatoes with juices, beef broth, and cocoa powder.  Simmer on low heat for at least an hour with a tight-fitting lid on; alternately, cook on low in slow cooker or in the oven at 300 for 90 minutes. 

Now test for salt – you may have lost some in the ladling of fat.  Add beans, vinegar, cornmeal, and Worcestershire sauce.  Stick your finger in some Allspice and the rub your fingers over the pot – I’m telling you, going too far here could be disastrous.  But getting it right – it adds that certain je ne sais quoi….

At this point, test for heat – if you need more kick, add cayenne to taste.  Most people will find this just right as is, and many people will find it too hot as is.  Know your dinner guests, but don’t be afraid to take a risk – the rice, cheese, yogurt or sour cream, cilantro and avocado will all balance the heat.  And you can always put some sliced jalapenos on the table, too.

Notes: 

For spices, I’ve grown attached to Penzey’s.  You can get big pouches of the chili powders more cost effectively than at the grocery store.  If you’re in SoCal, I’d also try your neighborhood market, if it stocks lots of Mexican foods. 

The deal with the speck is this: we’re eating less meat on a daily basis, but being able to add a small hint of smokey, meaty flavor to beans or greens makes such a huge difference to the final dish.  We can get some local speck and prosciutto made in Iowa that’s great – I keep a pack in the fridge and use a single slice or two as I need it.

I buy really good quality grass-fed ground beef, but I buy the higher fat stuff then just assume I’ll have to drain off fat after I’ve browned it.  

Finally, one of the things I love about chili is how well it freezes.  I put a few cups of chili in a small freezer bag and let it freeze flat, for easy defrosting.  This recipe should make three quart-sized freezer bags of chili, plus a bit.  Each bag will serve four, or three bountifully, if you serve it over rice.

Enjoy!