The best tomato sauce ever

I'm not the biggest fan of tomato sauce. Even on pizza. I think it goes back to college, when practically everyone I knew ate pasta with jarred tomato sauce like it was going out of style. I realize that it's a cheap and easy dish for poor and not necessarily culinary-savvy students to prepare — but I wish someone could have told them there's more to life than penne with Classico marinara.

When given a choice, I'd rather eat my pasta with cream, Parmesan, and lots of vegetables. An open jar of tomato sauce in my refrigerator is almost guaranteed to grow moldy before I'd used even half of it.

Last month, I read about a recipe for tomato sauce on one of my favorite blogs, Smitten Kitchen. This sauce was apparently so good that other Big Names in the food blogging world had been raving about it for years. So were Smitten Kitchen's readers: while typically her posts get around 150 comments, the tomato sauce post generated 500+ comments.

Then, inexplicably, I found myself craving this sauce. Driving home from work one day, I began to daydream about how the sweetness of an onion really could vastly improve a mess of tomatoes. So I went home and threw it together. It's ridiculously easy to make, considering that all that goes into it is canned tomatoes, halved onions, and butter. Open a can, peel and cut an onion, unwrap a stick of butter. Dump it all in a pot.

I really wish someone had told my friends about this recipe when we were in college.

It is surprisingly good, perhaps even the best pasta sauce I've ever had. For dinner, I threw in some peas and topped it off with Parmesan. But for lunch, it was just the sauce over rigatoni — it's delicious even without cheese. I never thought I'd like a red sauce that much. It must be the butter.

To be honest, I'd never made tomato sauce from scratch before. But now that I've made this, I definitely don't plan to buy jarred ever again.

Marcela Hazan's Tomato Sauce with Onions and Butter
(courtesy of Smitten Kitchen)

28 ounces canned tomatoes (SK used whole, but I use diced)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes. Stir occasionally. Remove the onion*, add salt to taste.

*You can toss this out, but why waste perfectly good food? Eat it with crusty bread or in a scramble. Or straight out of the container you've put it in after removing it from the sauce.

Satisfying my pasta cravings

While I enjoyed the food in India, there were lots of times that I missed eating foods from home: salads, Thai food, tuna sandwiches, hamburgers. I had a running mental list of things I would eat once I returned home.

In the first week that I was home, I made this recipe two nights in a row. That's how good it was. And really easy, too! I subscribe to the weekly newsletter, The Splendid Table, and last month, they included a recipe for "true fettuccine alfredo." Besides pasta, it consisted of three major ingredients: butter, cream, and Parmesan. That's it. I don't know why it never occurred to me how simple an alfredo sauce is — and to think of all those years in college when I would buy this kind of sauce in a jar!

The one change I made from the original recipe was to not add salt at the end of cooking. I included the salt the first night, and it turned out to be too salty. Considering that the pasta cooks in salted water and then salty Parmesan is added, extra salt at the end is simply redundant — and far too much.

This is not the kind of dish that's going to help you lose those last five pounds. If that's your goal, you probably don't want to eat this two nights in a row. But, if you can risk the calories, you may just want to eat this as often as you can.



Pasta with alfredo sauce
(based on a recipe from The Splendid Table)

1/2 c dry pasta (I used bowties because I wasn't in the mood for the long shapes)
1 tbsp butter
1/3 c heavy cream
1/2 c grated Parmesan cheese
pepper

Boil pasta in well-salted water according to package directions.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a large pan. Set aside while pasta cooks.

When pasta is ready and drained, reheat butter, and add cream. Add pasta and stir to allow cream to absorb. Remove from heat, and add cheese. Stir. Add more cheese if desired. Season with ground pepper (and herbs if you like — I added herbes de Provence) to taste.

Serves one.