a peek inside the fishbowl

Let’s get something out of the way here. Mark doesn’t like my tomato sauce. He really only likes his mom’s spaghetti sauce recipe. And I get that: (a) the man doesn’t really even like tomatoes and (b) it his mom’s recipe (admittedly) is a really good one with lots of meat.

But I like making my own too. I get to use up a whole bunch of fresh, locally-grown tomatoes, which are in steady supply at the market right now. And I also control the salt and everything that goes into it. As a bonus, I’v figured out that making your own tomato sauce is not actually that hard to do. It’d be pretty easy to cooks some up on a Sunday afternoon and set it aside in the fridge for your next night’s dinner and freeze the rest for another time.

Andrea’s fresh tomato spaghetti sauce recipe

You will need:

• 4 or 5 fresh tomatoes
• a can of no-salt diced tomatoes (I threw it in because I wanted enough to feed the four of us and have leftovers the next day)
• olive oil, about 1TB
• one medium onion, diced
• two cloves of garlic, minced
• Italian seasoning
• a tiny pinch of cinnamon

Begin with the fresh field tomatoes. It doesn’t matter if they’re a little beaten up (this is not a beauty contest!), but they do need to be nice and ripe and have a good tomato smell.

First, you will want to take the skins off. Take a sharp knife and slice a big X along the bottom of each one, just through the skin.

Boil them in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes until the skins start to wrinkle and peel off. Take them out of the water with a large slotted spoon. They’ll look like they’ve been hit with the ugly stick. Tomatoes from Planet Wrinkle!

While you’re waiting for them to cool, chop up the onion. I used a bit of red onion I had leftover, but anything is fine:

… mince the garlic, and sautee it along with the onion in a bit of olive oil. It’ll need about five or six minutes to soften. While that’s going on, core and chop the tomatoes into chunks:

Throw them into the pot along with the can of tomatoes:

Add your spices. In my recent batch I used 1TB of Italian spice mix, a pinch of salt, a bit of pepper, and a pinch of cinnamon (don’t overdo the cinnamon). Cinnamon, as a seasoning, is used quite a bit in Spanish and Moroccan cuisine. I like a bit of it in spaghetti sauce because if adds some je ne sais quoi, but it’s totally optional. You might want to add oregano and more basil, but it’s a personal thing. Tomatoes are cheap this time of year, so experiment!

Simmer until the sauce has reached a desirable consistency. Serve hot, over your pasta of choice, along with a healthy sprinkle of Parmesan cheese and freshly ground pepper. The freshness of this meal will knock you over, and you’ll love it even more knowing that it didn’t come out of a jar.

p.s. Can you believe I forgot to take a photo of the final dish? I guess I was too hungry. :)