Epic Tomato Sauce
August 22, 2011
Tomato sauce is the foundation of a huge selection of Italian dishes, so there are as many variations as there are folks who cook Italian food. Once you discount the gimmicky super simple recipes, the rest sort of separate into two separate philosophies. The first is the gourmet approach, which puts emphasis on subtle relationships between fresh ingredients and is careful not to overcook the tomatoes. I think these sauces do best when they are the center of the dish. The other philosophy is the homemade slowcooked sauce, and that’s what this recipe is. The intent here is to concentrate the flavor of your ingredients, yielding a thicker sauce that’s great to support other dishes. This is the kind of sauce I go for if I’m making pizza, lasagne, baked eggplant, etc…
This recipe takes a little while to cook (2-3 hours usually), but it’s really low involvement. You spend a few minutes at the start getting it going, and then just come back every once in a while to stir. If that still sounds like a long time to spend, you can get more for your troubles by making a lot. The quantities scale up really easily, so you can make a big batch and keep it in the fridge (for a couple of weeks) or freezer (for a couple of months).
