Rediscovering raw tomato sauce
It's bothersome and also kind of fun to forget little things about cooking, neglected recipes and the like. As long as you remember them again at opportune times. Tonight it was the notion of a raw tomato sauce (for pasta, of course). I'm pretty sure you could find an excellent discussion and recipe in Viana La Place's Verdura, by the way (some kinds of things I don't forget).
I wasn't thinking about a raw sauce at all when I grabbed some Roma tomatoes at the store this afternoon. Mostly I was thinking it was silly to buy San Marzanos in a can at this time of year. And I just felt like whipping up something simple. (Wow, I can see how the food bloggers end up with those sorts of entries they do . . . let me tell you my life story and what I made for dinner . . . .)
I halved the tomatoes (6 or 7) and squeezed out the seeds. Feeling too lazy to peel them (which you do have to do—sorry), I chopped them roughly and put them through the food mill. I love the food mill (mine is the classic plastic Moulinex) because just when you're sure something's wrong, you start to see results (I'm sure Gen. Petraeus is a big fan of the food mill). If you don't have a food mill, you will have to peel the tomatoes, as I mentioned—sorry. Otherwise the recipe won't turn out and your family will hate you.
Meanwhile I made a flavor base, sauteing three crushed garlic cloves in a few tablespoons of olive oil, adding about 1/4 of a red onion (in small slices), a thick-middle-finger-sized bit of salt pork (medium diced) and some salt and freshly milled black pepper. Oh, and a modest spritz of Thai fish sauce for its flavor-deepening qualities. It's basically liquid anchovies, you know.
Then I added the raw tomato puree along with some full leaves of Italian parsley, some red pepper flakes and more black pepper. At this point I was thinking I would let the sauce cook down, but I had the good sense to taste it.
Oh, my goodness, how delicious! Suddenly I remembered all about raw tomato sauces. You just heat it through and Bob's your uncle. So that's just what I did.
Yes, it's quite a story.
(The tag is something my uncle once said to me when I was running through menu options for a cookout.)
Labels: "I'm just looking for a simple side dish--not some big ethnic tribute.", food blog interlude
posted at 7:58 PM
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