Recipes from My Ugly Blue Kitchen: Super-Delicious Chunky Marinara

With Peanut due to arrive any day (my swollen ankles and stretched maternity tees say the sooner the better), it was time for me to stock the freezer with a homemade favorite.

I am Irish and grew up on store-bought pasta sauce.  My husband is Irish-Italian and also grew up on store-bought pasta sauce.  After we were married and I lost my job as a law clerk, I watched a lot of cooking shows, both at home and- oddly- at the gym, where Food Network seemed to be a favorite channel among those using the treadmills.  During this time I became an enormous Ina Garten fan.  It is Ina who convinced me that making one's own pasta sauce is not only easy, but nutritionally necessary.  Have you ever read the label of a conventional jar of pasta sauce?  I guarantee you that the second ingredient, after tomatoes, is sugar.

There is no sugar in my homemade pasta sauce.  In fact, there are only ten ingredients total. and it is incredibly easy to make.  It is also astoundingly delicious, at least, according to my Irish-Italian husband.  Because I want you, too, to make your own pasta sauce and not consume freakish amounts of sugar, I am sharing my recipe, which I've adapted from several sources, including Ina, below.

CMC's Super-Delicious Chunky Marinara

Ingredients per batch (one batch serves approximately four hungry Irish-Italians):

2 tbsp olive oil (I like Colavita)
1 yellow onion
6 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup merlot or other robust red wine
1 can San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes
4 tsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 handful fresh basil leaves
Salt to taste

Directions:

Step 1: Dice the onion.  Or, better yet, if husband is around have him do it, so you don't have to touch up your eye makeup later.  Saute diced onion and salt in 2 tbsp olive oil in a Dutch oven over low heat until translucent, about 8 minutes.

Note: Don't worry about over-salting.  I took a cooking class once and the instructor declared that it is impossible for Americans to over-salt while cooking because our natural inclination to limit our salt-intake preventst us from using too much salt before it becomes a problem.

Step 2:  As the onion is sauteing, mince the garlic.  Of course you could use minced garlic in a jar, but why would you?  In my opinion, fresh garlic is worth the extra bit of effort, especially if you have a good chef's knife.  We use six cloves per batch, but we are garlic fanatics.  Adjust to your preference.

Step 3: Add the garlic to the softened onion, stir with a wooden spoon, and allow to cook for about sixty seconds, until garlic is fragrant.

Step 4: Turn up heat to medium-high, Add 1/2 cup of merlot, and cook until most of the wine has evaporated.

Step 5: Add whole peeled tomatoes and juices.  Crush each individual tomato with your hand before adding it to the pot.  You may want to wear an apron for this step!

Note, this recipe specifically calls for San Marzano tomatoes- the best on the market.  I've tried other brands, including Scalfani and Cento, and there is no comparison.  This sauce calls for so few and simple ingredients, t's important that they're high quality.

Step 6:  Add the tomato paste, stir, and bring sauce to a boil.  Lower the flame to medium-low.

Step 7: Add the herbs.  I use another dash of salt, 1/2 tsp of oregano, 1/4 tsp of red pepper flakes, and about eight leaves of fresh Basil.  You can buy fresh packaged basil leaves at any grocery store, or, if your husband enjoys gardening as much as mine does, you can convince him to plant about twenty basil plants in your vegetable garden so you never run out.  Just make sure you rinse the leaves well before adding them to your sauce!

Step 8: Allow sauce to simmer on stove for forty minutes, until thick and saucy.

Step 9: Jar it!  Assuming you have leftovers (or you've made four batches, as I did), you'll need air-tight mason jars to freeze for later.  Santa brought me these mason jars last Christmas because Santa really likes my pasta sauce.

(Don't worry, Santa also brought me the J.Crew leopard flats and Fair Isle sweater I was pining for.)

The finished product!  Ready for post-baby consumption with my favorite portobello mushroom ravioli (which I buy at the Fairway.  I haven't ventured into pasta making just yet).  

Catharsis

After the movers drop the last box in our new home (and I do mean "drop;" several Crate & Barrel wine glasses are sacrificed in the move), I walk from room to room, surveying the job ahead.  It is overwhelming.  My in-laws have agreed to watch Minnow until 8 p.m. that evening, and I quickly realize that we will not be finished unpacking by the end of the day, or even the end of the weekend, as I had naively hoped.

I can't decide which I find more loathsome: Packing or unpacking.  Wrapping everything we own in multiple layers of bubble wrap and entrusting their fate to the storage gods is draining- no doubt about it- but I am having a difficult time unpacking because I don't yet know where anything goes.  We went from too little space to too much space, it seems.  This box of cleaning supplies could go in the linen closet, but it would be just as at home it in the laundry room.  Should that framed photograph of the Natural History Museum hang in the living room, or the den?  This vase would look equally elegant in the dining room or in the foyer... Also, there are some rooms in which we cannot unpack at all because the painters- God love them- are still painting.  They're going on four weeks now.

"I don't know where to begin," I say to my husband as I pry open boxes and then push them aside.

"Start in one room," he suggests.  "Do as much as you can in there, and move on to the next."

But in which room should I start?  The nursery is a logical first step, because I want to ensure that Peanut's room is ready, should she decide to move in early.  Then again, maybe I should start in the kitchen, the hearth of the home.  But the idea of spending an afternoon filling old, decrepit cabinets with my gleaming stainless steel cookware saddens me, so I decide to seek solace in the most cheerful corner of the house: My master bedroom closet.

In a home this old, it is rare to find one spacious closet in the master bedroom; it is absolutely urban legend to find two.  I feel like my husband and I hit the Power Ball with our equally-sized His and Hers closets.  Having a place to hang my clothes in the bedroom is certainly an upgrade from our first New York City apartment, where my closet was in the living room.  Here, we kept the antique bronze doorknobs- an homage to the former owners- and added fluorescent lights to each closet and the double light switch outside.

Obviously, a new closet calls for new hangers.  A few days before the move Minnow and I find boxes of these fun hot pink hangers, which would perk up any closet, from Bed Bath and Beyond.  They are slim and space-saving, which is important because  I am using them to hang my silk blouse collection, which is sizable.

Like a hoarder, I am big on saving shoe boxes.  I use them to store my most precious shoes, including a few pairs from the J.Crew collection.  Luckily, this closet has adequate shelf space to hold numerous boxed shoes, as well as a laundry basket packed with handbags.

I've had the shoe rack below since my freshman year of college.  It couldn't have cost more than $10 at Bed Bath and Beyond, yet it has proven to be one of the most useful closet organizers.  I've removed the top rack so that my clothes have more room to hang.  To maximize the remaining space, I stack shoes one on top of the other and plan to switch them out seasonally.  Hello, espadrilles!

Because we don't yet have master bedroom furniture, I am temporarily storing folded items in these stackable hot pink cubes from Ikea.  This cube contains all my running gear, which is washed and ready for my first post-partum run in about eight weeks.

Focusing first on the master bedroom closet is cathartic for me.  After my wardrobe is organized, balance is restored to the universe and I feel energized to tackle the rest of unpacking- room by room and box by box.

Of course, we all deal with stress in different ways.  While I am busy getting reacquainted with the clothes that have spent two months hanging in a cedar closet in my in-laws' attic, my husband works on this:

Aside from ample closet space, another benefit to owning a home is having a little land on which to plant a vegetable garden.  The tall plants are Beefsteak and Sweet 100 tomatoes- perfect for summer!

Never again will I need to buy parsley at the grocery store, thanks to my husband's green thumb.

Thyme and rosemary: Two of our most frequently-used cooking herbs.

I've got big plans of preparing jars and jars of fresh basil pesto in my ugly blue kitchen...

...which is probably the room I should work on next.