I did it! I made my own tomato sauce. ๐ ๐ ๐
Months ago, I was talking a lot about pasta (and vegan meatballs and chickenless parms and all that), and I was touting Rao's as the GOAT tomato sauce.
Eventually @moneyinfant had had enough of it and started pestering me to make my own sauce:
I put it on the backburner for a while but was always intrigued. Now I did it, and it was spectacular.
The recipe I leaned on called for just "crushed tomatoes", but I went up a level and used San Marzano, which I think @moneyinfant would probably agree is proper.
What's important is to use a GOOD olive oil. You should have your standard oil that you use for frying up whatever bullshit, but then you should be willing to cough up a 1/4 cup of really good oil for your tomato gravy. That's what I feel anyways.
I'm amazed at how easy it is to make sauce. Basically you stir some sliced garlic into the oil, and then start adding the tomatoes and the herbs and seasonings.
We have a lot of basil and oregano growing on the deck, so being able to use fresh home grown herbs was a treat and I'm sure kicked it up a notch.
The only part of this that's difficult or annoying at all is slicing the garlic, lol. I can't stand peeling and slicing garlic. But after that it's just a totally enjoyable process.
I was making eggplant parm, actually.
It involved a whole breading station and all the rigmarole.
What you see on the bottom there is my concoction of an egg-free "egg" wash.
I just added water to nutritional yeast, with some seasonings. I wasn't following a recipe or anything-- either I had heard of that trick before and locked it in, or I made it up. But seemed to work really well.
Flour, "egg", then breadcrumbs (all seasoned in their own right). Then fry it. Simple, just a lot of effort.
Then from there it's kind of up to you how exactly you prepare it.
Ideally I think I'd like to just fry it up and let the cheese melt in the pan, then pour sauce over and eat. The eggplant tastes awesome right after it's fried.
I was waiting for Chris to get home and trying to time everything, so I think it erred me towards baking it. So I built it as two layers of eggplant, with basil and Daiya cheese in between, and a little sauce on top. Then bake for 20-25 mins or whatever.
Was awesome.
The eggplant is a little bit of a different experience than when it's fresh out of the fryer. But still awesome.
The visual doesn't do it a ton of justice, because the flavor of that sauce is what elevates it from good dinner to GOAT.
Man that looks like delicious. Was the eggplant parm a part of this meal?
It could actually be a meal for two :-)
Loved your use of olive oil for the sauce because I hold the same philosophy as yours about it. Gotta be able to dish out 50 ml for the sauce. Although my sauce is more thick because I add a tiny bit of onion to it. I fry the onion and take it out and let it cool. Crush the crusty fired onion and add it back to the pan for sauce. So usually my tomato sauces is actually closer to gravy. Also, instead of basil I usually use coriander/cilantro. I think rest of my preparation method is generic.
ya eggplant was a part of it!! and it was for two!! It was 4 of those eggplant slices total. the spaghetti I bought was really good too, I think it was probably "spagettini", I was digging the thinness (more surface area for sauce I guess)
the onion thing sounds good.. but no basil?? ๐ I feel like I'd miss that so bad lol
I havn't really gone for spaghettini specifically but there is this bio brand of spaghetti in my local area shop that is thin like spaghettini.
Cilantro kinds of adds a floor of its own, then combined with the initially added onion, ginger and the tiniest amount of garlic creates for an aromatic feast :-)
yaaa I can see that! that sauce sounds really good actually
Looks fantastic. Tip: roast your garlic whole in the oven first it makes all the difference. Just the cloves and a generous amount of olive oil covered with tin foil. When it's like half brown and soft it's done. Do a bunch and it keeps in the fridge for a month to use as u want ๐๐
๐ฎ that's awesome, I'm gonna try it!! thanks for swooping in with the tip!
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meh, flag
Lol
baha ๐