I know everyone and their mother blogged about this sauce, but hey, maybe someone reading this little blog may not have seen it, so I couldn’t just keep it to myself. Tomato sauce is one of those things that yes, you can buy in a jar from Trader Joe’s for like $3.00, but then you don’t have the satisfaction of making it yourself. And you can’t personally vouch for the quality of the ingredients that went in that jar. And it’s really almost as easy as opening a jar of tomato sauce. Really. You only need to open a can of tomatoes and cut an onion in half. Oh, and cut a hunk of butter off your butter plate (this bit is rather important). So very easy. Easy peasy. As the title says.
I love this sauce with the fresh gnocchi from La Genovesa, an amazing old-school pasta shop in Palermo Soho. And I love that you can watch them roll the pasta out on their giant old machine, which is parked in the front of the shop. And they make killer ravioli (think fresh squash, spinach & ricotta, etc.). Love that too. This is the general consensus. Nothing but love, baby.
Adapted from Marcela Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking
Serves 4.
28 ounces (800 grams) whole peeled canned tomatoes (chopped or crushed tomatoes are okay too)
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
5 tablespoons (70 grams) unsalted butter
Salt and pepper to taste
10-15 basil leaves torn (if you have them, no biggie if you don’t!)
Dump the tomatoes into a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Toss in the halved onion and the butter and bring the pan to a simmer over a medium-low flame and stir every so often. If you’re using whole tomatoes, smush them against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon or snip with kitchen shears once they soften up a bit. Let it simmer uncovered for 45 minutes (or about 30 minutes if your tomatoes are chopped already). Add salt to taste (careful as some tomatoes are already salted and I often end up using salted butter).
While that’s simmering away, creating a deliriously wonderful fragrance in your kitchen, boil some pasta — about a pound should do. Remove the onion*, then toss the sauce with the drained pasta, add black pepper, a few torn basil leaves and some Parmesan, if you like. Although, it really doesn’t need anything. It’s just perfect as is.
* The original recipe says to toss the onion, but that’s sacrilege in my house. Some little pieces will slither out and find their way into the sauce and they should stay there. Any extra pieces can be cooked up with some scrambled eggs or tossed into a quiche or frittata. Or you can even just eat them with a hunk of bread, standing over the stove…just please don’t throw them away. So wasteful. And really very silly.
