Tomato sauce recipe

Heres the way I make a simple tomato sauce-

Materials:

1 can crushed skinless tomatoes

1/4 large white onion

2 cloves garlic

1tsp Balsamic vinegar

1Tbsp grated hard cheese (grana padano, parmesan, pecorino, etc.)

Various herbs

First, chop your 1/4 onion into fine slivers, about 1 cm tall, and a couple mm thick. You can chop them into bigger chunks if you like a chunky sauce, but im going for a silkier, smooth sauce. Then, crush and finely chop your garlic.

Now, drizzle olive oil on a pan, and put the pan on medium low heat. Wait for the oil to begin to shimmer, then put in your garlic and onions. Stir them around about once every minute, until they start to be translucent and a little bit brown. This is a good time to add in chilli flakes if you have them.

Once they hit the stage pictured above, dump in your can of tomato. It will splatter a bit because the hot oil in the pan and the water content of the tomato react agressively. It will look like this at first.

Stir the sauce until it has a consistent look, and the onions are spread throughout the pan evenly. Now, let it sit until you start to see bubbles coming up, just a few though. Then, mix it around so the heat is evenly distributed.

Now let it sit until the whole thing starts to bubble. At this stage, add in your balsamic vinegar and cheese. The cheese gives the sauce a savory, rich flavour, while the balsamic vinegar gives the sauce a smoother texture, more vivid colour, and intensifies the flavour. Now you can add some of your spices. A few leaves of chopped basil, a small pinch of dried rosemary, a small dash of cinnamon, and whatever else you fancy. 

Now, turn the heat down to low, and stir the sauce around until it stops bubbling. Start cooking your pasta and let the sauce sit over low heat, uncovered the whole time, stirring occasionally. This will reduce the sauce (in Cooking, reducing something generally means to evaporate some of its liquid.) This will intensify the flavour, colour, and make the texture more velvety.

Most pastas take about 11 minutes to cook, but follow the directions on the box. Including boiling the water, the pasta itself will probably take about 15 minutes, which is a good amount of time for the sauce to reduce.

This recipe will produce enough sauce for probably about 1.5 lbs of pasta (depending on how much sauce you like on your pasta) which will feed around 6-8 people depending on their appetites, or provide lunch for one person for a whole week.

Serve with grated cheese, freshly ground black pepper, and a light drizzle of olive oil.

Enjoy cooking and eating your delicious tomato sauce! This makes a great holiday family dinner, or just a simple solo meal. If you decide to make it, show me on instagram @davidramsay99 

Pasta

Pasta is an incredibly diverse food. There are so many different pasta shapes, different things the pasta is made from, and different sauces you can top the pasta with. The combinations are endless, but there are a few classics, which fit into larger categories. For example, bolognese is a meat sauce, the classic "spaghetti sauce" is a red sauce, and alfredo is a cream sauce.

When you're making pasta sauce, you can do it using almost anything you have. As many or as few ingredients as you desire can go into a sauce. Thats the great part of pasta- if all you have is butter, or olive oil, and some spices, you can make a sauce. (You can actually just put olive oil or butter on the pasta and eat that.) if you have carrots, celery, sausage, bacon, grana padano, garlic, onions, roasted red peppers, red wine, balsamic vinegar, and tomatoes, you can make a sauce from that. You don't need to go out and buy tons of extravagant ingredients- that is, of course, unless you want to. 

Another awesome thing about pasta is that you can make it however you like it. If you like penne with red sauce, go ahead and make that. If you like a fresh tagliatelle with cream sauce and lemon zest, you can do that too. It all comes down to what you want to eat, and what ingredients you have.

Throughout the next few weeks, ill show you how to make different pasta sauces. Ill show you a basic cream sauce, a red sauce, and a meat sauce. Enjoy!