Accidental recipies..

Sunday night I was cooking up another batch of Saltimbocca. I didn't cook any risotto this time, but I did decide to try Canadian-Swiss's suggestion of deglazing the pan. However, I didn't have any Marsala wine. I did have some inexpensive port that I accidently put into a batch of teryaki sauce I'd made months ago, instead of sherry, which turned out wonderful. Thinking that this would probably turn out the same way, I deglazed the pan with the port and poured the resulting sauce over the Saltimbocca. It turned out just as I thought it would, quite wonderful, with a nice reddish color.

Simply Great Spaghetti Sauce

Lately, I've become tired of the over-processed spaghetti sauce one can buy in a supermarket. Some of the brands used to make great sauce, but now you can see that they've been adding ingredients to make up for the cheaper, lower quality tomatoes that they are now putting into the sauce. These tomatoes aren't quite as ripe as the ones they used to use, so they have to find a way to sweeten up the sauce. Some companies are adding carrots to the sauce, which is a bit more healthy, but I don't really like carrots in my spaghetti sauce. The really bad ones are adding sugar. Sugar! If I want sugar in my diet, it's with my tea in the morning. I don't need to have added sugar in my spaghetti sauce.

So, now I've started making my own spaghetti sauce. And it's pretty easy. It can be cheap, but if you buy the best canned tomatoes you can find, it might cost you just a little bit more than the over-processed stuff. However, it's going to taste way better. Pretty much anyone can make this sauce.

1 400g can of chopped plum tomatoes
1-2 tablespoon olive oil
1 to many cloves garlic

Heat the oil at medium heat while peeling the garlic. Put the garlic through a garlic press, or chop. Put the garlic in the oil and reduce the heat so that the garlic is cooking very slowly. The slower you cook the garlic, the more it is caramelized, and the tastier the sauce will be. Don't burn the garlic.

When the garlic turns a nice golden translucent color, add the can of tomatoes. Stir the sauce. Put on medium heat until the sauce bubbles and then simmer on low heat, covered for at least an hour. I like the sauce chunky, but you can always blend it with a stem blender.

As with the pico di gallo, this sauce is also very good with polenta.