Tomato Sauce for Everything

Margaret asked for a recipe for tomato sauce and Bill also wanted to see this so I figured I would offer it up here. There is no making lasagna without sauce, that is for certain.

Mind you, it is a lot more fun to show someone how to do this than it is to talk about it, but here goes:

Cut up a medium onion. Mince up a few cloves of garlic.
Have a couple cans of diced tomatoes or one big can.

It matters what tomatoes you buy. If you have a bushel of fresh tomatoes and you peel them, seed them, and cut them into chunks, then you can use fresh tomatoes to make the sauce below instead of using the cans. Don't forget to add the juice to the sauce that comes out of the tomatoes while you are seeding and chunking. Also, remember to cook it a little longer, so that the pinkness leaves the tomato sauce and it starts to get a deeper reddish-orange. In the absence of fresh tomatoes, or if you just can't imagine going to all that trouble, look for the best canned diced tomatoes you can find. Locally my favorite is Red Gold petite diced. Anywhere that you can find S&W, those are my absolute favorites. They taste closer to fresh tomatoes than any other kind I have ever tried. We can't get them in the midwest.

In a medium to big saucepan, warm up a couple tablespoons of olive oil (when I do this just for me, I just use a bit of cooking spray). Toss in diced onion. Let it start to get translucent and add the garlic. Let them both get a little brown (caramelized). Then throw in the tomatoes. Then season with a little salt (maybe a teaspoon) and a couple tablespoons of sugar. When I make this for myself, I use Splenda instead of sugar. Stir it up. Let it cook as long as you can stand to wait, stirring occasionally. Taste it and add more salt or sugar as it seems to require. With cooking spray and Splenda, this is a 0-point food on Weight Watchers!

As far as herbs, my favorite is basil. I like fresh better than any other kinds of herbs. That's really all there is to it. Put this sauce over pasta and then if you like, you can drizzle grated Parmigiano-Reggiano over it.

Now, for the adjustments:

Do you want a thicker sauce? Throw in a can of tomato paste and only add the amount of water that gets the sauce to the thickness you want. Taste it and add more salt and sugar as needed. The rule of thumb for seasoning tomato paste is a half teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of sugar for every 6 ounces of tomato paste.

Do you want a really special creamy sauce? Add a pint of heavy cream and let the cream thicken up a little before you serve it. I really like this one, but it is NOT a Weight Watcher's favorite!

Do you want to make it meaty? Throw in some meat of your own choice. I have lately grown very fond of pulled pork and pulled beef which I roast up separately and then cut up into bite-sized shreds. Italian sausage makes a very nice flavor in sauce. If you want to make a Bolognese sauce, you grate a pound of carrots into the sauce at the garlic-adding time, use a minimum of two kinds of meat, and then finish off the completed sauce with a little red wine (or any wine you happen to have open.)

Do you want to add veggies? Go for it. A very nice addition is sweet bell peppers cut up and added in at the garlic-sauté stage.

Do you want to add hot sauce or red pepper flakes? Why not!

And if you want to go all out, combine some or all of these adjustments. I used ALL of these adjustments in the sauce that was in the lasagna that I brought to the BBQ.

Always be cautious about adding too much salt. There is often salt in the meat, salt in the canned tomatoes, and so just taste and be sure. It is easier to add salt than it is to take the salt out. Now, having said this, don't be so cautious as to make your sauce too bland. Salt brings out the flavor. You could say the same for sugar, but I find that people are reluctant to use sugar anyway. Sugar, like salt, really brings out the flavor of the tomatoes and also clicks into those sweet receptors in your brain that trigger all kinds of happy memories in people.

If the spices taste overdone, add more tomatoes and carefully bring the seasonings back up to what you want them to be.

This tomato sauce freezes very well so go on and make too much and then put it into freezer-type ziplock bags that hold the serving sizes you will want to defrost later.

If you want to use your sauce to make people fall madly in love with you, just before you serve it over pasta, stir in a couple tablespoons of butter. Don't let the butter heat up too much or it will turn into oil. It is better when the butter just barely melts and is suspended in the tomato sauce. Very sneaky. Very devious. Very effective.

I think that the adjustments are what real cooking is all about! It makes your cooking different from anyone else's cooking. My mother's sauce does not taste like mine and hers does not taste anything like her mothers used to. It's like a kind of fingerprint, actually.

Let me know if you try this and how it turns out!

Good luck.