OK gang, so I read and tried to follow Gourmet’s “Fresh Spaghetti Sauce” recipe, and while over and over, it applauded itself for simplicity, I failed to find it.  It was needlessly wordy, with steps that for the life of me, seemed to be no value add.  So here goes my take on how it should have been written:

Lori’s Far More Simple Fresh Heirloom Tomato Spaghetti Sauce:

4 cups of chopped heirloom tomatoes (Whole Foods carries them, but I like to steal mine from my good friend’s garden). Peel them if you can.  The easiest way to peel a tomato is to drop it in boiling water for like…a minute.  Those skins will come right off.  I’m lazy.  I just try to do with with my hands, getting a start with a vegetable peeler.  It’s a mess and I only get about half off.  Good ’nuff.  I love using these fine tomatoes, and well you know, they were free, so great, but this sauce turned out so well, I’d use regular fresh Roma tomatoes if that was all I had.

Ingredients:

3 minced garlic cloves

1/2 of small, white onion, minced

Olive oil

Fine sea salt and pepper

Fresh basil, chopped fine

Italian sausage, browned (I added just a few sliced white mushrooms, but that’s your call. Use hamburger and I’ll come to your house and take away your apron.)

Linguine (Did I say spaghetti?  I prefer linguine, but again, dealer’s choice.)

Steps:

Put the tomatoes into a processor and process until it’s a consistency you like.  Meantime, heat some olive oil in a large skillet and gently cook the garlic and onion.  If you’re garlic goes brown, you’re heat is too high or you’ve cooked it too long.  Throw it out unless you like bitter.  After the onion and garlic are slightly softened, add in the tomatoes, and season with salt and pepper.  I season to taste, which is really the only way to add salt.  If you don’t taste as you go, you’re just throwing a dart with a blindfold on.

It takes at least 10-15 minutes for the tomato sauce to cook down a bit.  In the meantime, I browned my sausage and cooked my linguine. When it’s cooked down at least half (it will look so watery that I called it tomato water…and then I took a taste.  Hey!  Where did all that flavor come from?), I added a tablespoon more of olive oil.  Maybe a little more or less.  I just swirled it over the top.

Last, I mixed in the the sausage, the basil, and the linguine, and mixed it all together over the low heat.  The tomato sauce just disappeared into the dish.  My kids didn’t even know there were tomatoes on their plate.  I thought it would be bland and pointless.  Another spaghetti disappointment.  WELL HELLO, was I ever wrong.  That was JUST UNREAL.  Greg and I have already fought over the leftovers.  We could not get over this dish.  I can never eat canned spaghetti sauce again.  It doesn’t matter what you add to that stuff, it’s wrong at its core.  The tomatoes taste nothing like fresh tomatoes….now that I know, I can’t UNKNOW. That’s the thing about cooking with fresh ingredients: you can’t untaste greatness. It changes you.