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What Do You Put In A Tomato Sauce Recipe - Yahoo Recipe Search
Food52I bought a pasta machine as a post breakup gift to myself last summer and that moment really is what started family dinner. Since that first pasta night we have done five or six and without fail, no matter when I make the dough or how early I begin shape the pasta, we will not eat before 11pm. I mostly make traditionally Italian if not more specifically Roman pasta dishes that I picked up while living in Rome in 2012: Bucatini all’Amatriciana, Ragu, Carbonara, occasionally delving into Umbrian Penne alla Norcina. I am fully a snob when it comes to pasta, and this leads us to the true hypocrisy of this post: I made meatballs. Quick recap on the meatball: Italians only serve them by themselves if they’re large, and when they’re small they usually go in soup. When the Italians immigrated to America at the turn of the 20th century they were actually spending less of their income on food then they were in Italy and thus eating more meat and the meatball “snowballed” for lack of a better word. I found a recipe for tiny meatballs last week that had tons of herbs and ricotta AND I could make them the day before dinner, so we put all prior rules and feelings about American meatballs in the bathroom. So these meatballs are a combination of a couple recipes that have all clearly been based off of Marcella Hazan’s recipe from her book Marcella’s Italian Kitchen. The last time I tried to make pasta sauce Ian yelled at me. It was arguably bad pasta sauce. Bad in the sense that it was fully edible and had anyone but me served it we all would have been more than happy, but it was bland, there was much too much sauce in relation to the amount of meat, the flavors didn’t combine right, it didn’t cook long enough, and we all have come to expect more from me. I was not going to let that happen again so I went back to my recipe hunting for making the perfect marinara sauce. Sourcing back to Marcella Hazan she claims that whole peeled tomatoes, a stick of butter, salt, and an onion, and those four things alone make the perfect sauce. Besides the fact that she’s a best-selling James Beard Award-winning food writer, her meatballs came out really good and I figured i’d give it a shot with my own tweaks. Makes 12-14 servings of sauce. Unless you’re feeding a small army or my friends that have apparently never eaten before, halve recipe or plan on freezing some of it.Food52I am probably going to get a reputation on food52 as a cook who only makes pasta! But when this contest was announced, I knew that I wanted to submit this dish. This pasta has many cherished memories associated with it. It has been the centerpiece of my family's Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes dinner for as long as I can remember. As a child, I remember having Christmas Eve dinner at my grandparents' house. These were huge, chaotic, festive affairs with about thirty family members -- aunts, uncles and cousins. We usually did not have literally seven fishes, but dinner always included two kinds of baccala (cod). One was dried cod that was turned into a salad dressed with olive oil; the other was fresh cod, baked in the oven. There were always fried smelts and anchovies. And occasionally there would even be octopus. But the highlight of the dinner (at least for me) was the pasta with squid sauce. Of course, my grandmother always served the tentacles as well as the rings, which some of my cousins found rather disgusting. They would eat sugar and butter sandwiches instead, but that's another story. Now that I have grown up and moved away, our Christmas Eve dinners are more intimate affairs. But I still make this pasta every Christmas Eve for my family. Now, it gives me great pleasure to see my six-year-old daughter embrace this dish just as I did, so many years ago. She calls this recipe Spaghetti with Rings (because of the shape the squid is cut into). So that's what we call this dish now. The spirit of this dish is very much what my great-grandmother and my grandmother would have made. But I have tinkered a bit with the recipe ingredients and techniques. First of all, I strongly recommend splurging on San Marzano tomatoes. Because this is such a quick-cooking sauce, you want the best tomato flavor that you can possibly get. My ancestors would not have used shellfish in this dish, but I love the addition of them. Now that I live in the Pacific Northwest, I use local clams, but mussels are also a nice choice. I cook the squid for far less time than my grandmother would have. She was an excellent cook, but as my father often said, her squid was a bit too rubbery. To get the optimum basil and garlic flavor into this delicate sauce, I have adapted a technique that NYC chef Andrew Carmellini uses in his excellent cookbook, Urban Italian. Basically, you infuse olive oil with garlic and basil and add it to the sauce at the end of the cooking time rather than at the beginning. It adds a really wonderful layer of flavor to the sauce. And while I know that most foodies frown on putting cheese on a pasta sauce that contains fish, my family has always garnished this dish with Pecorino Romano, and I continue to do so too. However, purists could make breadcrumbs out of stale bread, toast the bread crumbs and a little bit of salt in some warm olive oil, and use the breadcrumbs as a garnish for this pasta.Food NetworkI have a perfectly justifiable weakness for any recipe that comes to me passed on through someone else's family. This is not just sentimentality; I hope not even sentimentality, actually, since I have always been contemptuously convinced that sentimentality is the refuge of those without proper emotions. Yes, I do infer meaning from the food that has been passed down generations and then entrusted to me, but think about it: the recipes that last, do so for a reason. And on top of all that, there is my entrancement with culinary Americana. I just hear the word meatloaf and I feel all old world, European irony and corruption seep from me as I will myself into a Thomas Hart Benton painting. And then I eat it: the dream is dispelled and all I'm left with is a mouthful of compacted, slab-shaped sawdust and major, major disappointment. So now you understand why I am so particularly excited about this recipe. It makes meatloaf taste like I always dreamt it should. Even though this is indeed Ed's Mother's Meatloaf, the recipe as is printed below is my adaptation of it. My father-in-law always used to tell a story about asking his mother for instructions on making pickles. "How much vinegar do I need?" he asked. "Enough", she answered. Ed's mother's recipe takes a similar approach; I have added contemporary touches, such as being precise about measurements. But for all that, cooking can never be truly precise: bacon will weigh more or less, depending on how thickly or thinly it is sliced, for example. And there are many other similar examples: no cookbook could ever be long enough to contain all possible variants for any one recipe. But what follows are reliable guidelines, you can be sure of that. I do implore you, if you can, to get your meat from a butcher. I have made this recipe quite a few times, comparing mincemeat that comes from the butcher and mincemeat that comes from various supermarkets and there is no getting round the fact that freshly minced butcher's meat is what makes the meatloaf melting (that, and the onions, but the onions alone can't do it). The difficulty with supermarket mince is not just the dryness as you eat, but the correlation which is that the meatloaf has a crumblier texture, making it harder to slice. I am happy just to have the juices that drip from the meatloaf as it cooks as far as gravy goes, and not least because the whole point of this meatloaf for me is that I can count on a good half of it to eat cold in sandwiches for the rest of the week. (And you must be aware, it is my duty to make you aware, that a high-sided roasting tin makes for more juices than a shallow one.) But if you wanted to make enough gravy to cover the whole shebang hot, then either make an onion gravy and pour the meat juices in at the end or fashion a quick stovetop BBQ gravy. By that, I mean just get out a saucepan, put in it 1.76 ounces/50g dark muscovado sugar, 4.23 ounces/125ml beef stock, 4 tablespoons each of Dijon mustard, soy sauce, tomato paste or puree and redcurrant jelly and 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, to taste. Warm and whisk and pour into a jug to serve. Ed instructed me to eat kasha with this, which is I imagine how his mother served it, but I really feel that if you haven't grown up on kasha - a kind of buckwheat polenta - then you will all too easily fail to see its charm. I can't see any argument against mashed potato, save the lazy one, but I don't mind going cross-cultural and making up a panful of polenta; I use the instant kind, but replace the water that the packet instructions advise with chicken stock. And as with the beef stock needed for the gravy suggested above, I am happy for this to be bought rather than homemade.Food.comI got this recipe from Robin Miller on the Food Network. I did tweak it a bit to my taste. I love her show, hope you like this as much as we did!! By the way, I had never made lasagna before and it turned out GREAT!! I never knew you could make lasagna without boiling the noodles first! What a time saver.Food52This is a wonderful soup dish that can be served as a small first course, side if you lessen the liquid, or as a complete dinner. I have never made stuffed cabbage rolls in my life. For years and years I have drooled over pictures of them, but the long process to stuff the cabbage leaves and braise for several hours always intimidated me. So I did the next best thing. I turned them inside out and made soup instead! While researching what ingredients go into a stuffed cabbage roll dish, I discovered that every Eastern European country has their own version of this dish. Ukranians typically make theirs with pork, sauerkraut and onions, while the Romanians add a generous amount of fresh dill to their sauce. Polish cuisine mixes ground beef or pork with rice, which is the common Americanized version. Hungarians add paprika to theirs, which I did too. Most of the sauces are tomato-based, except for in Sweden where they typically serve it with Lingonberry jam. Trying to decide what to put in the soup took me several hours of scouring recipes (in which I could have been actually making the traditional dish!), and finally just had to start making it by the seat of my pants otherwise we’d never eat. I wrote a list of most common ingredients, then started adding them one by one, tossing in a bit of this and a pinch of that. I kept a notepad nearby so I could document what actually ended up in the soup, and how much. Another thing I did was try to healthy it up a bit by using ground turkey and brown rice, and used some homemade no-sodium turkey broth. And please don’t get intimidated by the long ingredient list, it comes together fairly quick and easy. You can also make the cooking time much shorter if you use white rice instead of brown. Brown rice takes a long time to cook at high altitude.Food52Even though our ground is still white with snow here in the north, we are all anxiously awaiting spring -- and barbecue season. What better way to get ready than a big vat of your own homemade barbecue sauce? It takes less than 5 minutes to measure all the ingredients into a saucepan, then 15 minutes of easy simmering while you have a cup of tea, or do the dishes, or put up your feet, and you are ready for manning the grill. Plus you have bragging rights that this is your own, homemade, secret-recipe barbecue sauce, rich with the complexity and depth of red wine, tangy with vinegar and sweetened with honey. Who knew it could be this easy?Food.comAs the new snow blew in from the ol' North, it appears to be just a delightful day for the birds outside who are eating, and scattering seed everywhere to beat the band. Hundreds of birds gathered to fight over their bird seed, and the squirrels are starting to get into the act as well. I can see the deer moving in from the now snow white meadow to make their bellies plumb from eating extra corn at the full corn cribs. I just finished supplying the cattle with their sweet hay which is placed in their feeders, and calves were sleeping away after gorging on mother's milk. Everyone is fed. Good! Feeling rather proud at fulfilling the many needs of hungry animals and birds on the farm, I ponder for a minute, thinking "what can I feed us today"? Dennis reminds that he hasn't eaten since early in the morning and his stomach is growling like a lone tiger waiting for some action. Nope, can't forget Dennis....so I ran to the kitchen to see what I could scratch up. A potato left over from potato salad that had already been boiled, fresh bacon and fresh eggs. I set out to put this easier then hanging wash on the line during a breezy day recipe. Quick as winking your eye, and you have a platter of goodness right before your eyes. Which reminds me now, just where did Dennis go, oh, wait a minute....he's right here. Dennis has a *cute* habit of coming up behind and scaring me a lot. And this was gonna be one of *those* days.Food.comAnother fantastic Gary Rhodes recipe. Light and delicious! Perfect for a starter course but fantastic for a summer lunch as well. I have made this several times when cherry tomato season comes around. I have also frozen this with great results. NOTE: A basic passata is a sauce made of tomatoes, basil, water, preservative, however some types have more herbs and spices in them, so make sure you like what is in your passata as it will be a main flavour in your soup. You can substitute tomato sauce (not ketchup!) or canned tomatoes (put through the food processor). Sometimes I don’t have passata on hand so I put a can of chopped tomatoes in the food processor (enough to equal the recipe equivalent) and add a bit of basil to it to taste. I don't add water because the canned tomatoes are already in liquid. I hope you enjoy this soup as much as I do.Food52There has never been a more one-of-a-kind pizza like the bar pizza. For the most part they are never good, many times they are awful, but that has never stopped anybody from ordering one. Patrons order them because they are drinking. Combine it with hunger and it makes these pizzas far better then they would ever be if a shot of better judgement was in hand. Without exception a bar pizza reigns over the pink pickled eggs languishing in the murky liquid of the large glass jar back by the whisky. Bar pizzas are also infinitely better then the microwavable cups of Spaghetti-Os or the burritos ensconced in a cardboard tortilla. Even so, that doesn't make them good. Here is the catch, in Indiana this food exists and maintains a life all its own because in Indiana if a bar sells liquor by the drink it has to be able to serve food to a minimum of 25 people at all times. On top of that many bars(mostly working class bars) don't have room for a kitchen much less the money for one. To get around this law most bar fly type establishments bring in a microwave, a toaster oven labeled as a pizza oven, or a snack rack where pork rinds rule. Sporks and disposable tableware abide, as do paper towels used as napkins. It is less then the bare minimum and ordering anything while the bartender is busy is likely to make him/her hate you. In the moment though, when hunger and alcohol meet, a bar pizza is the best pizza ever. It doesn't happen often but it does happen enough that people continue to order them. If all things aline, it hits the sweet spot—that meaty place on the bat that makes hitting a home run feel effortless. In food speak it is the moment when something is at its best, it is perfectly ripe for eating, and waiting longer is to watch perfection in its decline. Here is the problem, why would I want to make one of these awful pizzas at home? If I do make them at home it doesn't mean I am drinking at home, well not often anyway. It means I have kids, kids that want pizza—all the time. I make a great pizza dough. I make great pizza but then there are those nights where I don't want too. It is readily apparent to me why I need to perfect this pizza. Make it a dinner everyone requests on any given night. The point is, this is a great pizza to have in your back pocket and I never would have thought much about it until I read an article at Serious Eats. At that moment I knew I was going to start making bar pizzas, I was diving in deep and going for it, and I did. Like lots of recipes though, and maybe even more so, this one takes practice. Myself, I always make a recipe three times before I give up on it and in this case it took all three times. It's okay, there is nothing wrong with eating your mistakes when it comes to food. Besides it is not a lot of work and here is why. My kids love spaghetti and there is rarely a day I don't have a homemade tomato sauce of some kind in the fridge. Bacon, ham, salami, or even pepperoni are always in the deli drawer. I almost always have some sort of mozzarella too, either fresh or grated. I have taken too keeping tortillas in the freezer for quesadillas, so adding tortillas as pizza crusts to the list of uses is a plus. . Even so, if you had none of these specific ingredients you have something, say eggs, ham, and gruyere. If not you won't make this pizza anyway. But as I said, I am looking for the sweet spot, with practice I found it, and ever since making bar pizzas is like effortlessly hitting one out of the park. 1. When it is time to sauce the tortilla put a dollop of sauce in the middle of the tortilla and using the back of the spoon spiral your way to the outer edge. If this were a regular pizza I would tell you to stop short of the edge by about 1/2-inch but with this kind of pizza take the ingredients to the edge. It keeps the tortilla from being charred beyond recognition. 2. I have used all kinds of pans to make this pizza, stainless steel, enamel, cast iron and a comal (pictured). I like the camol best but I also know not everyone has a comal. I made these in a 12-inch cast iron skillet for a long time before I started using the comal. I use a comal simply for ease of access to the tortilla. I makes the pizza easier to assemble. 3. Turn on the broiler before taking anything out of the fridge or putting a pan on the stove. It needs time to get hot. 4. Keep all the ingredients at pans edge. These go fast and you have to be ready with the ingredients. 5. It is important to brown the the tortilla deeply before turning it. If it isn’t brown enough the pizza will lack the crunch that makes it so good. 6. Place the top oven rack 7 to 8 inches from the broiler. This prevents the pizza from cooking to fast and keeps the edges from burning.
