Adventures in Cooking: Pasta Sauce

I love to cook. Love, love, love.  Over the years, the Food Network has pretty much taught me everything I know about cooking.  No lie.  I love that channel.   My mom doesn't really enjoy cooking, and my dad is a very picky eater, so we usually had the same things for dinner when I was younger.  I started to follow that trend with K, basically making the same stuff every week.  Now that I'm done with school and our wedding is over, I have time to try out some new recipes.  My cooking bug is back!

My boss makes her own homemade pasta sauce that she learned to make from her mother.  It's delicious.  She shared this recipe with my coworkers and I, so I figured I'd share it with you guys.  That way, you too can enjoy something other than Ragu.

Homemade Pasta Sauce

Ingredients: 

• 2 large cans crushed tomatoes
• 2 large cans of water (use the tomato cans)
• 1 12 oz can of tomato paste
• 1 cup olive oil or canola oil (depending on preference)
• 3 onions, diced (yellow or vidalia)
• 5-10 cloves of garlic (I say, bring on the garlic!)
• 5-6 leaves fresh basil
• Garlic powder
• Italian seasoning
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper 

So, first thing you want to do is dice up the onions.  I know it seems like a TON of onion, but trust me, it cooks down a lot and gives the sauce a really good flavor.  I do a fine chop, because I don't like really chunky sauce.  I slice up the onion and let the food processor do the rest.  When you're done, you'll have this:

Pour the oil into a large stockpot, and add the onions once the oil gets hot.  You want this to be over a medium heat.  Cook the onions until they're translucent.  While your onions are cooking down, finely dice up the garlic.  Add to the pot once your onions are somewhat clear.  Cook the onions and garlic together for a few minutes.  Next, add the tomato paste.

You want to keep stirring the tomato paste with the oil, garlic and onions, until the paste is nicely incorporated and is more liquid than paste.  Add your two cans of crushed tomatoes.  Fill the cans up with water, and add the two cans of water to the pot as well.

Now, it's time for seasoning.  Continue to cook the sauce over a medium heat.  Wash off your basil leaves, and drop them in, whole.  Don't worry, you'll fish them out once the sauce is done.

Add pepper, salt, garlic powder and Italian seasoning to taste.  You'll need a pretty fair amount of each, since there is a lot of sauce to flavor!  Bring the sauce to a boil.  Once boiling, reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 2 hours (if not more).  Remove the basil leaves, and voila!  Sauce!  Not from a can!  Isn't it amazing?

This sauce can be frozen and reheated for in the future.  The recipe makes a lot, so have a few Ziploc containers handy.  To add a little more to this sauce, I plan to cook up some ground meat, portobella mushrooms and green peppers and add them to the portion of sauce I use for tonight's dinner.  Why not add it to the whole pot?  Well, I'm told this will freeze better without the meat and other goodies.  Anyway, it'll be much more delish to cook up fresh meat and veggies and add them to the defrosted sauce. 

I usually cook up some ziti, add my veggies to the sauce, and load everything into a 13x9 baking dish.  Top with cheese, bake for 15-20 mins at 350 degrees, and mmmmm.  Enjoy.