Homemade Pasta Sauce

Maybe it's because I'm pregnant or it's because I've never been to Italy,
or maybe it's because I'm insanely hungry and never sampled homemade tomato sauce before...

but

this is the best tomato sauce I've had in a very long time.



Yesterday I got the wild idea to make my own sauce from scratch. All the tomatoes in the garden seemed to be ready at once and I'd already made giant batch of salsa (which I will be having with dinner tonight).
I had to try making own sauce. I'd never done it before.

With a quick bit of googling and research (and some help from Phil gathering the tomatoes) I was on my way. I blanched and peeled and seeded the tomatoes then cooked them for 45 minutes with garlic, olive oil, and onion then a few sprigs of basil from the garden.

Heavenly.

I cannot wait for pasta night or for pizza night.
It will really just be excuse to eat this tomato sauce.




Here's how I did it:

3 1/2 lbs of tomatoes
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 medium onion
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp salt (or salt to taste)

Blanch the tomatoes to remove the skins. You can do this by boiling the tomatoes for around 15 seconds and putting them immediately into ice water or cold water. The skins should come right off, but if they happen to give you trouble you can throw them into the boiling water again.

Once the skins are removed, cut and deseed the tomatoes over a strainer. Save the tomato juice that's free of seeds for later. This may seem like a silly and time-consuming step, but all the experts say that the seeds impart a bitter taste to the sauce. I'm going to take their word on that one. I don't have time to mess with bitter sauce.

Finely chop the onion and garlic and cook them for 10 minutes in the olive oil until they are translucent and slightly golden in color. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 45 minutes. If the sauce thickens too much in the process simply add in the extra tomato juice that was saved. Add salt and enjoooooy.

Seriously, I really enjoyed this.

xoxo
Talia Christine