Revisiting Red Sauce
There was a time when “red sauce” was synonymous with Italian food. Thank the Sicilian immigrants to New York’s Little Italy who brought their grandmother’s meatballs and secret sauce recipes. Or thank Prego and Ragu, always trying to out do the other with the best commercial touting the comfort of a bowl of spaghetti drowning in soupy tomato sauce. Whoever is to thank (or blame), there was a time when having "Italian" for dinner meant boiling a box of spaghetti and smothering it in a jar of bright red, over sweet, tomato based sauce.
More recently there has been a backlash. Food obsessives in America are taking vacations to the rolling hills of Tuscany and the canals of Venice only to find not a plate of Prego-like marinara in sight. These same people are often shocked to find that what they grew up eating was more of an Italian-American creation than Roman or Venetian. Those same people who once took comfort in that jar of red sauce are now turning up their noses, shunning the inauthenticity of jarred sauce.
I’d like to make an appeal to those disappointed food lovers: come back to the red sauce. The red sauce of your childhood might not exist in Italy but, yes, the Italians do like their tomatoes. And yes, real Italians do sometimes employ tomato sauce with delicious results. It just might be a little different than the spaghetti and sauce of your youth.
To help guide you away from the jar or back from abandonment, I thought I’d share my basic recipe, step-by-step. Master that (trust me, it is very simple) and there are many avenues from where you can branch out.
It all starts with tomatoes. This time of year you can find the real deal, vine ripened and meaty. But for the other 9 months of the year when tomatoes are grown in hothouses, I’d recommend the highest quality canned tomatoes you can find: whole, peeled, and packed with basil. I have found vast differences in canned tomatoes so it may take a few tries before landing a favorite brand.
The rest of the ingredients (olive oil, garlic, chili flakes, salt) are pretty straight forward. As with the tomatoes, better olive oil, fresh garlic, and hand chopped dried chili will come together in a better tasting sauce.
That’s it! All you need for a terrific base red sauce. From there the tomatoes are hand crushed, garlic browned in the olive oil with the chili flakes, and everything simmered together for only about half an hour until the juices stop running and the tomatoes amass in a thick mound.
This red sauce will keep in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks at this point. And though it doesn’t look like much, it is highly concentrated. A little goes a long way. Just a half cup rewarmed with a few tablespoons of pasta water and some extra olive oil will coat 8 ounces of spaghetti.
Not to mention, even more than the jarred sauces out there, this basic recipe opens up for endless variations. Crisp up pancetta or guanciale, toss in grated Pecorino and some sauce with your spaghetti and you have the classic Amatriciana. Fry eggplant in olive oil, add ricotta salata, red sauce, and penne and you have Pasta a la Norma.
Last night I made a batch of red sauce intending to use it for a baked rigatoni dish later this week. Still warm I could not resist sampling just a little. I cooked the pasta to al dente, tossed it with some of the sauce, a bit of the cooking liquid, and a handful of fresh torn basil. A dusting of Pecorino-Romano later, it was as comforting as the red sauce of my childhood, but fresh and authentic in a way I think even a real Italian could appreciate.
Made with fresh basil, tomatoes with basil, garlic, dried red chili, chili flakes, salt, rigatoni, olive oil
Serves/Makes: 8
- 1 can (15 ounce size) whole, peeled tomatoes with basil
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 5 cloves garlic
- 1 dried red chili
- OR
- 1/2 teaspoon chili flakes
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 pound rigatoni
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 cup packed fresh basil leaves, torn
- 2 ounces Pecorino Romano cheese, grated
Place tomatoes in a medium sized bowl. Using your hands, crush the tomatoes until none are whole. It is okay to leave larger chunks.
Heat first measure of olive oil over a medium flame in heavy bottomed saucepan with high sides (you want the high sides so the scalding tomato juices to not splatter everywhere while reducing down).
Mince garlic and add to oil. Stir frequently for 2-3 minutes until lightly browned. Mince the whole dried chili pepper and add to the garlic. Stir for another 30 seconds.
Add tomatoes and salt. Bring to a simmer. Let bubble over medium heat stirring often to prevent the tomatoes from burning.
After about 30 minutes the tomatoes should have cooked down into a thick mass, with no watery excess. Reserve 1 cup of the tomato sauce. The remainder can be placed in the refrigerator and stored for another use.
While sauce is cooking, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. About 10 minutes before sauce is done, add rigatoni to the boiling water. Cook for about 8-10 minutes until al dente.
Heat remaining olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Using a slotted spoon, transfer pasta directly from cooking water to the saute pan. If not much pasta water came with the transfer, add a couple of tablespoons from the pot.
Stir in the 1 cup of reserved tomato sauce. Toss for a couple of minutes until the sauce is evenly distributed and clinging to the pasta, liquid evaporating.
Turn off heat and stir in torn basil and grated Pecorino.
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