Sauce For Real

Making tomato sauce from scratch. It seems so cliche, so hackneyed.

It reminds me of one of the secondary opening/character building scenes in A Bronx Tale or Good Fellas or something where the Mooky narrator is talking about grandma's old country red sauce that took two days and waxing lyrical about being an ignorant fuckwit with ethnic pride.


Schlock!

Crappy!

Faux-Sentimental Ass Clowning!

I hate that shit.

However, right now Marlow has a glut of end-of-season, overripe tomatoes of all stripes. Heirloom, Beefsteak, Plum, Cherry, you name it and we have a heaping, dirty plastic farm crate full of them slowly turning to mush in our store room.

More than I hate Mook sentimentality, I hate seeing beautiful produce at it's peak go to waste. I'll also admit to being a bit sentimental myself about the soon to be lost Summer produce. Thusly, a red sauce renaissance has been born in the kitchen's of both Marlow and Sons and my own kitchen at old number 408.

Making red sauce is so easy, even a dirty mick like me can do it:

Stuff

1 Cubic Shit Ton of Ripe Tomatoes (heirloom and Plum are best but as long as they're fresh, who gives a fuck)

1 Cubic Shit Ton Garlic (peeled and whole)

1 or More Cups Nice Olive Oil

Salt

Optional

Sugar

Bay Leaves

Red Pepper Flakes

Oregano

Basil


Make

All you need to do is wash your tomatoes (get the old, soft ones that Jose Soto refers to as "assed out" at the end of the day from those bearded farmer's market guys. Low ball them because they don't want to take that shit home) and cut off the stem tops and the really gross blemishes. Then just throw them in a pot with lots of oil and garlic and boil them down on low for about 4 hours.

Add a little salt at the beginning to speed up the breakdown of the tomatoes but add the stuff for flavor at the end as you don't want your much reduced sauce to get over salted as it boils down.

Honestly there are no wrong answers with this vague recipe other than watching your salt. If the tomatoes you got were not totally overripe you may need to add sugar.

That's it.

What do you do with it once the sauce is reduced into a flavorful lumpy pot of good in the world?

I usually take my immersion blender and smooth it out. After that I freeze it (once it's cooled) in ziplocs and use it as the base for soups, stews, pasta sauces, pizza sauces and even the roasted style salsa. Don't get me wrong, the sauce is fine on it's own. Feel free to just boil some pasta and finish it with the pure red, just keep an eye out for a fat Italian guy playing the Mandolin if you do.

OK?