Had a very relaxing Saturday night this week with some wine, a movie and pasta with a homemade sauce. The sauce turned out great – I found the basic recipe here at Butteryum, but I’ve made a few changes and use different ingredients so I’ll go over my method here too.
Ingredients:
A small onion, chopped
1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper for the onion
2 cans of Unico San Marzano tomatoes
3/4 can tomato paste
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp dried parsley
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup red wine
4 pinches of sugar
Parmigiano Reggiano rind
This recipe makes enough sauce for around 4 servings for two people; we freeze most of it after letting it cool.
First, puree the tomatoes in a food processor. I use the Unico brand of San Marzano tomatoes because they’re cheap and easy to get hold of. The first time I made this sauce I used imported San Marzano tomatoes from a local Italian deli which cost almost three times as much, and with Unico I can’t really tell a difference.
Next chop a small onion and fry it in the oil at a medium heat, with salt and pepper, until it carmelizes. Throw in the garlic and stir for just about 20-30 seconds, until just after that amazing sweet cooking-garlic smell starts, then add the tomato paste. Keep stirring and cook for around 4 minutes. Then add the tomatoes, wine, sugar, spices and the cheese rind; bring to a boil and simmer for about 20 minutes. Simmer time seems to be controversial when it comes to these sauces; the original recipe I link above says to simmer for an hour, but I found other links that claim cooking tomatoes for longer than around 10 minutes increases bitterness. Personally I found that a 20-minute simmer tastes better to me than an hour.
For the cheese rind, what I find is that if I buy a small slice of Parmigiano Reggiano and have some grated with pasta every time I have it, it lasts me 3 weeks or so which is coincidentally roughly how often I make this sauce. So I’ve always got a rind to throw in, and honestly it makes a huge difference to the taste. It’s optional but I’d highly recommend it!
The wine we had this time was a pretty good Chianti we found called Melini. It’s not too expensive and is easy to find around Vancouver. We use it for the sauce and have the rest of the bottle with the pasta.
Sorry for the lack of pictures, I’ll throw some in here next time we make it!
