Magnifico!: Marinara sauce

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February 26, 2008

Marinara sauce

Every cook needs a good marinara recipe in her or his repertoire. Why not? It's simple to prepare, goes with tons of things, and is easily modified into a multitude of other sauces. It's infinitely superior to what attempts to pass for jarred spaghetti sauces, and again, it's so easily made and even more easily customized that it's really not worth buying it off the shelf.

I recently made a batch from a recipe recommended by raving reviews from my Mom and I fell in love. It's sweet but not overly so with plenty of warm garlic flavor without any of the raw garlic punishment. I used it for three separate applications: saucing ravioli served with fresh mozzarella and torn basil (pictured below), pizza Margherita, take due, and spaghetti with calimari (utterly divine, but so modified on the fly due to utterly poor recipe testing that I wasn't keeping track of things like quantities and time, so I'll have to re-make it in order to post the recipe). Needless to say, the sauce is all gone. Well, that is, until I make another batch...

Freshly made marinara atop ravioli garnished with fresh mozzarella and torn basil

Nikon D50

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Marinara sauce
From the September 2007 issue of Food & Wine

Makes 4 1/2 cups (enough to sauce 1 1/2 pounds of pasta)

3-5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

6 garlic cloves, peeled

1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste

Two 28-ounce cans of whole peeled tomatoes with juices, crushed by hand

Pinch of sugar

3 large basil sprigs

Freshly ground pepper

In a large saucepan or saute pan, heat the oil. Add the garlic and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 5 minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Stir in the sugar and the basil, season with pepper and bring to a boil.

Simmer the sauce over low heat, stirring occasionally, until it thickens and is reduced to 4 1/2 cups, about 30 minutes. Season again. Discard the basil and fish out the garlic (don't throw them away - they're delicious!).

The folks who developed this recipe were kind enough to provide three variations: All'Amatriciana sauce, puttanesca sauce, and vodka sauce.

Posted by Jitterbean Girl at 10:15 PM | herbs, italian, sauce & dressing | Printer-friendly version | Comments (0)

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