Cook This - Tomato Sauce

“There are many miracles in the world to be celebrated and, for me, garlic is the most deserving.”

- Leo Buscaglia

I completely agree with Mr. Buscaglia. Honestly, the smell alone of garlic and onions sauteing happily in butter makes life worth living. With that said, I give you my recipe for a delicious and easy tomato sauce.

Full disclosure, I based this recipe on trial and error with similar recipes from Bon Appetit and SmittenKitchen.com. The Bon Appetit recipe called for onions, garlic, crushed tomatoes, and olive oil. It was good, but I felt like it was missing a certain roundness, if that makes sense.

So I moved on to Deb's recipe on Smitten Kitchen. Deb is a genius - if you haven't checked out her blog, please do. Her recipe called for onion halves, whole canned tomatoes, and 5 tablespoons of butter. You are to simmer the tomatoes with the butter and halved onion. Let simmer, take the onions out, add salt, and viola, sauce. I found the butter to be a miracle worker, but didn't get as much onion flavor in the sauce as I would have liked.

So..I adapted, experimented, and decided that I absolutely need to keep the butter, as well as the diced onions. Here goes it:

Ingredients (you can't even call this a list, it's so laughably short):

Medium Yellow Onion, Finely Diced

5-6 Cloves of Garlic, Minced

1 Stick/8 Tablespoons of Unsalted Butter (if you use salted, just adjust the amount of salt added at the end)

28 oz Can of Crushed Tomatoes (I use Whole Foods Organic w/ Basil. I can't vouch for any other type of canned tomato.)

Salt and Fresh-Cracked Black Pepper, to Taste

Glass of Wine, for the Chef (entirely not optional)

Directions:

Melt that glorious butter, add the onions, saute for 10 minutes or so, until the onions are soft and translucent, but not browned.

Add garlic and continue to saute for 2 minutes. During those few minutes, be sure to inhale the smell of these three ingredients partying together. It's the best.

Add tomatoes and bring to a light simmer. Simma' for 20 minutes or so, until flavors are combined.

Add salt/pepper to taste.

Serve over pasta, use as a pizza sauce, eat it with french bread, eat it plain, with a spoon, out of the pot, while no one is looking. What? Anyway, it is really REALLY good. And guess what? It gets better as the days go by, assuming you don't eat it all on the first night.

Go forth and cook. And eat. And smile.

Lynne