I love Italian Grandmothers. Can’t you just picture one? An old lady with white hair, a snug apron, a body that resembles a overstuffed sausage trying to get out of its casing, smelling like Oil Of Olay and standing in front of the stove stirring a pot of sauce for hours. Who doesn’t dream about that?
The one thing I don’t like about these aging sexpots are their grandchildren. I’m not talking about the aristocrats from “Jersey Shore’, but all my Italian friends that come over for dinner and go on and on about how my “Italian” food doesn’t compare to their grandmothers. I really don’t care. So save the stories how when you were little, you would come home from school and she would have a huge plate of spaghetti waiting for you. And since we’re all being honest here, it sounds more like she had low self-esteem and used food as a way to get people to love her.
Anyway, Italian or not, I love making a big pot of tomato sauce and using it for a week. It takes some time to make, but it lasts a while and the longer it sits in your fridge the better it tastes. Here it is.
Recipe: Basic Italian Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
- 1/4 Pound Pancetta
- 1/4 Cup Olive Oil
- 1 Large White Onion
- 5 Cloves of Garlic
- 1/2 Teaspoon Red Pepper Flakes
- 3 Cans of chopped Tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
- 1 Cup of Water
- 1/4 Teaspoon Sugar
- 1 Tablespoon of Salt
- 1 Teaspoon Pepper
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large pot on medium heat. As the oil is heating, dice the pancetta into little cubes and add it to the hot oil. Cook for about 8 minutes until the pancetta is brown. Dice and add the onions to the pot and bring the heat down to medium-low and cook for about 10 minutes or until the onions are clear. Finely chop the garlic and add it in with the red pepper flakes and cook for 1 minute. Add all the other ingredients and bring to a boil. Once the sauce starts boiling cook for 2-3 hours on low heat. Let it simmer. After 2 hours it’s done. The longer it cooks the better. So if you have time and don’t mind stirring every 10 minutes cook it for another hour. Serve with anything and everything
Number of servings (yield): 8
Meal type: dinner
Microformatting by hRecipe.
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