Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–I’m so glad you’re here!
If you have been following this blog, you will know that several months ago, I decided that, like French Cuisine, California Cuisine also needed to have its own set of “mother” sauces. Since that list doesn’t exist, I decided to make one myself. My choices for sauces include mayonnaise, vinaigrette, pesto, salsa, tomato sauce, Hollandaise sauce and soy sauce. In previous posts, I shared recipes using mayonnaise, vinaigrette, pesto and salsa, and today, I’m beginning my exploration of tomato sauce.
I can’t think of a better time to introduce tomato sauce than the beginning of the hot summer months when tomatoes appear in great red, yellow and orange heaving piles on tables at the farmer’s market, still warm from the summer sun, having been picked in the morning for use on your table in the evening’s meal.
Today, I’m introducing my basic tomato sauce:
My inspiration for this recipe came from our first trip to Rome many years ago. And what better place to get an inspiration for tomato sauce (or just about anything for that matter!) than in Rome?!
Mr. Stone Soup and I love Rome. We’ve been there several times and each time, I fall more deeply in love with the city. It is all at once, a modern, bustling center of business and industry and an open archeological dig site. Its people are outgoing, busy, loud, gregarious and great fun. We LOVE Rome.
While traveling, we almost always eat well. But Rome is different. Romans, like most Italians, live to eat. But Romans guard their family and local connections, and finding the most authentic local cuisine takes more effort than finding decent Italian restaurants for tourists, which are everywhere.
Our first trip to Rome was during a miserably hot summer and rather than stand in endless lines to see the coliseum, we retreated to the Piazza Navona, where we sat on benches in the shade, ate gelato and watched the parade of people and entertainers go by. The Piazza Navona was not far from our hotel, and when we got hungry for our evening meal, we looked in the nooks and crannies of the streets around there. Our noses led us to a gated patio, where people were being allowed in to eat. It was clearly a restaurant, but had no signage, no greeter, no nothing. Mr. Stone Soup is intrepid and when it comes to good food, fearless. He went to the gate, cracked it open, and beckoned a person working there.
Speaking in broken Italian, Mr. Stone Soup asked that we be let in to eat. The man greeted us like a lion protecting his pride and said that they had no menu, and that his mother made whatever she felt like cooking every night, that it was a prix fixe menu, and that it wasn’t a restaurant that tourists would enjoy. Mr. Stone Soup insisted that we would. The man insisted that we go to the pizza joint next door. Mr. Stone Soup insisted we would be good Americans and that we weren’t interested in the pizza joint for tourists. The man told us to wait. We did, and were soon greeted by an elderly Italian woman, presumably Mama. She looked us over and said “this isn’t a restaurant for tourists!” Mr. Stone Soup pointed to the food and in Italian said “the food looks and smells so wonderful! Please let us in!”
The woman finally shrugged and pointed to an empty table and said “put them over there.” The heat of that summer evening in Rome had nothing on the heat of the searing stares of the patrons as we were admitted into the dimly lit patio outfitted with maybe a dozen small tables. We ordered nothing. We got a bottle of unmarked white wine, vegetables, pasta, a chicken dish and dessert. The food was exquisite and the whole experience was magical.
The next time we went to Rome, we tracked down the same restaurant, went through the same barriers and ritual to getting in, and eventually sat down to an equally sublime meal, which was largely the same as the first time we had been there. We loved every bite both times.
The pasta was rigatoni glazed in a mildly spicy and creamy tomato sauce. This tomato sauce recipe is not exactly the same as the Mama made in her kitchen in Rome (how could it be?!) but it’s a pretty good copy–and it’s incredibly easy to make–I almost feel guilty when I make it! It’s comprised of only five ingredients that most of us have on hand in our panty shelves at any given time. It’s also good with almost any pasta. In the picture above, I used cascatelli pasta, which worked great.
Tune in later in the week for a deeper dive into the tomato’s connection to California, as well as further exploration of tomato sauce as a foundational sauce of California Cuisine.
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
