Tomato sauce

[cosmolinguist]

So I made pasta sauce from scratch on Thursday, something I'm embarrassed to say I'm just getting around to at the age of 32.

I know it's stupid, but I don't like tomatoes raw/on their own so I never buy them. I don't consider them an ingredient...even though I love pizza and pasta sauce and chili and curry, I tend to buy those things in jars or else make tomato-free versions of them.

But this week I got some cherry tomatoes in my veg box and I thought oh fuck it, let's just do this.

I used their recipe because I've had really good luck with them. Some of the Abel and Cole recipes (peanut butter noodles, balsamic mushrooms, broccoli with lemon and chili croutons, they even taught me how to make the first potato salad I didn't hate but I can't find that recipe there now (that I didn't know it'd disappeared because I never needed to look at it after I'd made it once speaks volumes about how nice and straightforward it was, I think)) have become real favorites of mine. I like that the recipes are fairly forgiving and flexible, which is how I cook anyway: it's always a splash of this and a few handfuls of that and if you don't have this veg then that'd be great or practically anything will probably work.

This time it was "well these mushrooms need using up so I'm putting them all in." Which made for a really mushroomy sauce -- it wasn't quite what I was expecting, but it was nice! I love mushrooms so much I could probably make this sauce without any tomatoes and I'd be happy. It was nice and rich, really chunky, the small tomatoes have least of the acidity that makes my mouth and my stomach unhappy with their ilk, and of course it's a squillion times better than anything in a jar.

I'll definitely have to play around with the proportions of everything. I can now with a little more confidence experiment because I know I can basically do this. And that makes me really happy. Even if I feel like I'm coming really late to this party.

Comments

[quirkytizzy]

I'm 32 and have never made pasta sauce from scratch either. (We're the same age!) I'm going to try that recipe when I can. Thank you for linking it! And that is the awesome thing about cooking - it's very flexible. Thank god, cuz I am a broke bitch who has to improvise A LOT.

And you know, I've never made rice. Not even instant rice. We all have to start somewhere, right???

[cosmolinguist]

I guess I've had people telling me for years that it's easy and it's nicer and it's cheaper to make it yourself, or maybe I just hang around in middle-class parts of the internet.

Anyway whatever chagrin I feel at having "only" gotten around to this now is far exceeded by how excited I am to have done this at all, which is why I've told everyone about it here.

[rmc28]

*snicker* I am half a decade older than you and I don't know how to do this.

(I could look it up; I don't)

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

I've recently found myself doing pasta sauces with canned whole tomatoes (mushing them up with a spoon as it cooks). Works wonderfully and tastes really good :)

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

If you add a tiny bit of sugar and a little nutmeg to tomato sauce, it softens and mellows the acidity.

[cosmolinguist]

Mine had a tiny bit of sugar in it, but I'll add nutmeg next time, thanks.