There is no substitute for homemade Italian tomato sauce.
But it's the other ingredients that make homemade tomato sauce so awesome. You can add capers and sliced ripe olives. You can add intensely flavored herbs like rosemary, Italian parsley, basil, Yum! You can even add brandy (DOD does it all the time), but red wine is pretty good in this tomato sauce. Give it a final boost with a t or 2 of fresh lemon juice and 3-4 T brandy. Maybe some black olives and capers. Sheesh! I could go on forever, I guess. Okay, here's the recipe:
New Italian Recipes Presents: Ingredients: If you have good fresh tomatoes, blanch them in boiling
water until the skins are loose and wrinkled. Cool in cold water and
remove skins before dicing. If you squeeze through strainer with mesh
small enough to catch the seeds, the removal of the seeds will make the
sauce a little less bitter. We usually don't remove the seeds. We can't
tell that it makes enough difference to go to the trouble)
Preparation: Add garlic and basil, re-cover, for another 5 minutes or so. Uncover and add wine. Reduce by about half. Add tomatoes and S & P and simmer for 15 minutes. You can reduce the sauce further and intensify the flavor. We like to add the brandy and lemon juice about 3-4 minutes before finishing. If you want to turn this sauce into Neapolitan Sauce, add 10-12 sliced ripe olives, and 1 1/2 T capers just before finishing. Fresh Italian Parsley can be added at the end if you like it. For a nice twist, add 3-5 crushed and chopped anchovies. You talk about kicking something up a notch! Especially good in fish stew (Cioppino). Yum!!! Write it down and star it, pupils: This tangy tomato sauce can be used virtually anytime when you would like a juiced-up alternative to a can of tomatoes called for in a recipe. It's worth the effort! Note: You can double this easily, but adding 3-5 more cloves of garlic is not necessary unless you are a garlic hound like us. (If you can believe it, we've actually heard there are some people who do not like garlic! Hard to believe, but I guess it's true. Pity for them!) Obviously, these people are "not" Italian, even at heart! So, make a large batch of sauce and use what you need for the recipe you are preparing, then freeze the rest in batches for future recipes. You can thaw it out in the microwave or in warm water in no time. Restaurant chefs do it all the time, DOD can vouch for that. Why not you? Buon appetito always!
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