This next recipe, very much like the brown chicken stock that I made in a previous post, is not a major player in the collection of recipes in this cookbook. But it is a very important one nonetheless. It is something that is used throughout the book as a part of other recipes, and darned tasty if I do say so myself. Even in French cuisine, tomato sauce is considered to be one of the five mother sauces. So because of that, I am giving the tomato sauce its own post.
If you put 100 people in a room and ask them how they make their tomato sauce, you would probably get 100 different answers. Do you prefer it smooth or chunky? Onions or no onions? Spicy? The combinations are quite infinite. But again, it's all in personal preference, and something that you the home cook can and should personalize whenever and wherever you can.
I believe that every home cook should have a good go-to tomato sauce in their repertoire, and you can't go wrong with Mario's. I've used it a lot in the past. It's also relatively simple to make and it doesn't take that long to cook. I would make a big batch and either can it for future use, or put a bunch in the freezer for a later time.
Let's dive in to this sauce.
First I took and small diced some onion thinly sliced some garlic.
I started cooking the onion mixture in a sauce pot over medium heat, in extra-virgin olive oil, until the onions got golden brown.
Next was to add some fresh thyme and very thinly shredded carrot and combine with the onion mixture to cook a few minutes more. I know what you are thinking, not many of you are probably used to putting carrots into your tomato sauce. So why does Mario do it? The sweetness from the carrot counterbalances the acidity and bitterness of the tomatoes. Mario said to finely shred the carrot, so I used my micro plane in order to do so. This shaved the carrot so fine that once it started to heat up it basically just melted within the sauce.
While that was going, I hand crushed my cans of whole peeled tomatoes. Again, this is where you want to use high-quality product, preferably San Marzano tomatoes. They are much sweeter than their American counterpart.
The tomatoes get added into the sauce pot. The mixture is brought to a boil and then reduced down to a simmer for approximately half an hour, or until the tomato sauce resembles the texture of hot cereal.
At this point the tomato sauce is all done, it just needs a little bit of salt to taste. As you can see, this sauce is quite chunky. If you prefer yours to be really smooth, after it has cooled you can purée your sauce if you wish. I happen to like mine a little bit on the chunky side just like Mario's.
I had some guests over the house this weekend where I had the opportunity to use the tomato sauce with something that I was cooking for them. Everyone seemed to really like it. In fact, my batch of sauce was completely used up! I am going to have to make another batch so that I can keep it in the freezer to use when I come across it again in some of the recipes.
Feel free to let me know what you think of this sauce while you are cooking with me at home. Until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment