cook: marcella hazan’s tomato sauce with onion and butter

I didn’t let Patrick give our neighbors some of the last of our tomato harvest: a few heirlooms and some romas scavenged from our neighbor, Joe Italiano. I kept insisting that I would use them. And I did. Marcella Hazan had this super simple recipe of a tomato sauce with just butter and onion. But I hate waste and don't follow her recipe exactly. I whirred in my Vitamix all the tomatoes left and a medium red onion until it was pulverized and then threw it into my stockpot with a big knob of Irish butter and a scattering of salt.

While my sauce simmered away for 45 minutes, I washed and refilled my salt crock. For everyday cooking, I combine sea salt and kosher salt, but because neither contains iodine, I also add iodized salt. And I don't use iodized salt alone because it's too salty as the crystals are much finer. And I think from now on, I'll use the iodized salt only for boiling pasta and my sea and kosher salts as finishing salts.

While my sauce was simmering, I sipped Chardonnay and prepped the garlic bread to go in the oven before our carb heavy Sunday supper.

 

I supposed I could have left the spaghetti sauce well enough alone, but I had to add the beef meatballs in the freezer to the marinara and it's de rigueur to add parmesan to the pasta and sauce.

The pasta took only 9 minutes to boil to al dente, and I had hubs spoon his own sauce over his spaghetti.

 

Fucking delicious. One of the most simple and our favorite meal of all time. And it was okay to not have a green vegetable like a salad with our meal. I'll make a Caesar when we eat the leftover pasta bake this week.