Red Sauce

It kind of looks really gross in this picture. Sorry.

I've been making red sauce for a while now and have never thought to look at a recipe. You know just put some tomatoes in the pot, season, simmer. Done. But with my new Google Reader I saw that a while ago my favorite food blog, smittenkitchen, had posted a recipe for red sauce.

Apparently, this is a hotly debated topic, especially amongst Italians. Who knew? I followed her instructions, which were much more labor intensive than mine. But the sauce turned out great. Before, my sauce was really chunky, more like a ragout instead of a sauce. And what I needed today was a sauce, something pourable and spreadable to cover a lasagna that I had made a while back.

So here it is: super simple red sauce, that's actually saucy.

4 lbs of tomatoes

1/4 cup olive oil

one onion

1 head of garlic

1 red pepper

1/2 head of broccoli

1 tsp salt

a pinch of aji flakes

1/4 cup of basil

Remember I said a little labor intensive - but don't let that scare you. I had done all of the prep work in 20 minutes, max.

Boil a small pot of water. Wash your tomatoes. Cut a X in the bottom of them. Place them in the boiling water for 30 seconds. Immediately put under cold water. Peel the skins off your tomatoes and set aside.

Cut tomatoes into quarters and de-seed. Dispose of the seed in a strainer over a bowl. You want to keep the juice that comes out.

Rough chop tomatoes.

In a food processor put your onion, broccoli, red pepper and garlic. Process until paste like.

Heat olive oil in a medium pot. Add paste like veggies. Cook for 10 minutes. Add tomatoes. Add aji flakes and salt. Simmer for 30ish minutes. While simmering mash your tomatoes periodically to help break down the chunks.

Add basil. Simmer another 5 minutes. Taste, re-season, eat out of the pot like I did. It's really good.