Steamed Clams + Pasta

These were on sale at FD for $0.49/each a while back, so I got a half dozen to test out cooking clams. I'd never done it before, and I think I'm safely far from pro. This meal ended up so-so, but I can easily blame that on lack of skill and not recipe fault. Hard to say. It wasn't that they weren't good - it was just less sauce than I expected for the pasta, and possibly I have no idea how to cook clams.

Of course I can't find the exact recipe I used, but having looked over several that seem similar and familiar, I think we can rough out what went on.  I'd say this recipe I'm looking at on Savory Sweet Life looks like a tempting one to consider, so we'll go with that and assume that's what I followed except I poured it all over pasta.

3 tablespoons butter
3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1/2 cup dry white wine or dry Vermouth
2 pounds of clams (Littlenecks or Manilla), rinsed and cleaned
3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
*optional 1 small lemon cut into wedges

Melt butter in a medium pot over medium heat. Add garlic and cook for 2-3 minutes until garlic is fragrant but not burned. Add wine and increase heat to medium-high until wine is brought to a simmering boil. Add clams and cooked covered for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until clams have opened. Discard any clams still closed. Add parsley and give the pot a quick stir. Transfer clams and broth to a large serving bowl, serving with lemon wedges on the side.

pasta, broccoli, and garlic-red pepper sauce

Yes, I have been horribly MIA, but enough with the excuses. As of this past week, I have a 2 month paid internship doing market research, which I am very excited about. As a result of that and working my other part time jobs and have more friends and therefore fun, I am really busy but also increasingly happier here. Thus I signed my lease to stay in ATX another year! Eep!

Today I got up to go take a stand up paddle board yoga class (mouthful), but it was already full when I got to the gym. So I did a spinning class, rented a stand up paddle board and paddled around the quarry for a while, swam a bit, went grocery shopping for some snacks, made a quick lunch (and by lunch I mean my favorite uncooked meal, pictured below - at least I'm getting my 5 daily colors in!), and then took off to Zilker to play sand volleyball for a few hours. It was a great day, but by 6 pm when I got home, I was pooped and thrilled to shower and relax.

I was going back through all the SK recipes I've missed over the past few months, and decided to give this one a try for dinner. I only had frozen broccoli on hand, but I figured I could make it work enough for my standards. It ended up being good - I'm not huge on spicy, but I think my estimations were perfect for my heat level and still being flavorful - and filling, so I was happy. Then I got all sorts of ambitious and dedicated the next four hours to making tartlets, but more on that separately.

1 pound pasta [I used a single person serving of what looked good to my hungry eyes of penne]
1 pound broccoli rabe, heavy stems removed, remaining stems and leaves cut into 1- to 2-inch sections [I used handfuls of frozen broccoli - and put them in still frozen at the same time as she calls for the rabe]
1/2 cup olive oil [I used about 1/4 cup for one serving]
5 garlic cloves, peeled and minced or pressed [I used 2 cloves]
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or more or less to taste [I used about that much of a mix of red pepper flakes, chimichurri mix, and bruschetta mix]
About 1 heaping teaspoon Kosher salt (or more to taste)

To serve: Grated Parmesan or Romano cheese [I used white cheddar because that's all I have!]

Bring a huge pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and five minutes before its cooking time is up, add the broccoli rabe. It will seem like too much for the water, but with a stir or two, the rabe should wilt and cook alongside the pasta. Drain rabe and pasta together and pour into serving bowl.

In the same pot or a tiny one, heat the olive oil with the garlic, pepper flakes and Kosher salt over moderate heat, stirring frequently for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the garlic becomes lightly golden. Pour mixture over pasta and toss to evenly coat. Shower with freshly grated cheese and eat at once.

spinach pesto pasta

I'm due to go to the grocery store (and will tomorrow as I have big plans to make dinner for the boyfriend, my first solo attempt to impress him with my culinary, non-baking skills), so my dinner plans tonight were vague. I have some random leftover items from the juicing and a couple staples in the pantry, but nothing obvious. Thinking about the amount of spinach I had made me think about making a pesto. I've made a tomato-almond pesto before and read about pea pesto, so I knew there were variations to be made on it. I looked up a basic pesto recipe in Joy of Cooking, and this was my substitution thought process:

• basil - spinach (fresh for both)
• pine nuts - pistachios
• garlic
• olive oil
• parmesan

I closed the cookbook (gasp!) and just sort of winged it. It was really good. The garlic gave it a bit of a bite, but I like that. If I had been thinking right, I would have started the pasta first, and it would have been a really quick dish to make.

*I think I only used 1/2 to 1/3 of the full yield for my 1 serving of pasta, the rest is in the fridge for tomorrow.

2 cloves garlic

8-10 shelled pistachios

1 cup fresh spinach

1/2 tbsp olive oil

1 cup grated parmesan

salt to taste

I used my cuisinart speed stick food processor attachment to blend up 2 cloves of garlic, about 8-10 pistachios (shelled, of course), and about a cup of fresh spinach. 

I blended and stirred it until it was all the texture I wanted. I added a bit of olive oil (all told, maybe half a tablespoon), grated in some parmesan cheese (probably a half to three quarters of a cup), seasoned it with a bit of salt, and blended it a bit more. 

Then I cooked the pasta, spoon drained it into a bowl, mixed it with about half of the pesto, and then served it with a bit more parmesan on top.

asparagus risotto

Dad and Dana sent us some little care packages a few weeks ago, and in mine, there was a package of asparagus risotto. I think I helped Ebe make risotto once, but other than that, I haven't had any cooking experience with it. This was really delicious. It says there are 5 servings for the package, but I made it over, I believe, 4 occasions and was really full each time. It turned out really well and was easy to make, so as much as I prefer to try to do things from scratch, I would definitely get some of this again.

The instructions are for making the entire package. As I portioned mine out (single cooking!), I did about 1/3 of the instructed amount each time and it worked well.

Butter
1/2 cup white wine
3 cups broth/hot water
asparagus risotto mix
parmesan and olive oil as desired, to serve

Melt a knob of butter in a saucepan and add the risotto mix. Toast over low heat, stirring constantly for a minute or two.

Add 1/2 cup of white wine and stir through until evaporated.

Prepare around 3 cups of broth or hot water and add a little at a time and cook over low heat for 15 - 16 minutes, stirring occasionally until cooked.

Serve hot with freshly grated parmesan cheese and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil as desired.

Nutritional information (for 1/4 cup dry mix, from the package info)
1g total fat
30 g carbs
0 g sugar
3 g protein

noodles with tofu

I am not really quite sure how to call this sauce. The ingredients included garlic, peppers, cilantro, brown sugar, and lime juice. It was quite yummy though. I bought a sushi kit and finally had time/initiative/ingredients to use it tonight (see post), so I decided to make another asian flavored dish for the main course. As it turned out, this was ready first, so we followed our tofu noodles with sushi, but no one really complained. I liked this recipe though, even though I couldn't make the sauce as recommended with morter and pestle and just used our hand mixer, which didn't seem to work fabulously. I also have yet to find a decent onion at the HIT in like, 6 months. I'm not exagerrating. I had my eye on the recipe for a while, but the HIT has consistently been out of cilantro altogether and good avocados (for the sushi), so the stars were not aligned until tonight for this meal.

12 ounces / 340g dried soba noodles
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus a bit more for the tofu

16 oz / 450g extra-firm tofu, drained and patted dry

3 medium cloves garlic
scant 3/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
3 small/medium shallots - as mentioned, no onions/similar, so I just skipped this
3 small serrano peppers, minced - I wasn't sure what the Bulgarian equivalent was, so I used jalapenos
1 bunch (about 4 handfuls) of cilantro, stems trimmed
1 teaspoon natural cane sugar (or brown sugar)
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice - I think I used a bit more
3/4 cup / 180 ml extra-virgin olive oil  - I definitely used less than this, but I didn't measure

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt generously, then cook the soba noodles per package instructions, being mindful to not overcook them. Drain, run under cold water for a minute, shake of as much extra water as possible, then toss well with the olive oil. Gently work the olive oil through the noodles. Place the soba in a large plastic bag and refrigerate overnight, or until you're ready to use them - up to a few days. [I left mine plain, no olive oil, and used it about 10 minutes after rinsing.]

Make the dressing using a mortar and pestle OR a food processor. [As mentioned, I used my hand immersion blender, with moderate success, but it was okay.] Pound the garlic and salt into a paste, then work in the shallots one at a time, then the peppers. Then the cilantro a handful at a time. The mixture should be quite smooth. Add the sugar, then the lime juice before stirring in the olive oil a bit at a time. Taste and adjust the flavors if need be - more salt, sugar, lime juice, etc.

Cut the tofu into slabs, rub gently with olive oil and place on a medium-hot grill. Cook until golden brown on one side, flip, and grill the other side as well. [I cooked it in a pan in some olive oil until the sides were a bit browned.]

To assemble, toss the soba noodles with a good amount of the dressing, reserving enough to drizzle generously on top of the tofu. Place the tofu on top of the noodles, and drizzle with more dressing. [I served the noodles plain, added the tofu, the steamed broccoli, and then drizzled the dressing on each dish and let everyone mix their own.]

lemon parmesan pasta

This Monday I did not have a lot of energy or time for dinner. I finished school, came home, found a recipe, hustled to the grocery story and back, had dance practice, and then came home to cook dinner. So I found a recipe for a pasta that looked yummy, simple, filling, and used only a few ingredients (the less to carry home on my chilly walk from the HIT to my house). SK pulled through again. I realized that I had made a similar recipe a while ago with asparagus, but this was good and easy, and I also was able to make banana bread muffins with my browned bananas. It did well as a reheated lunch the next couple of days, which always makes life and lunchtime easy and pleasant (especially while I watch the last few episodes of Wildfire!).

1 pound spaghetti or linguine
Salt
3 lemons
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil , plus additional for serving
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 ounce finely grated Parmesan cheese (about 1/2 cup), plus additional for serving
Ground black pepper
Small handful fresh basil or arugula leaves, shredded [the grocery store didn't have either, so I skipped it]

Cook linguine or spaghetti in well-salted water to your al dente tastes in a large, wide-bottomed pot.

While pasta is cooking, zest lemons until you have a little shy of a tablespoon of zest. Juice lemons — you’ll have anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 cup lemon juice.

Drain pasta, reserving 1 1/2 cups of pasta cooking water. Dry out your pot, then boil the olive oil, cream, zest and 1 cup of the reserved pasta water together for two minutes over high heat. Return pasta to pot and stir until coated. Add the cheese and 1/4 cup lemon juice and toss, toss, toss everything together. Add more pasta water, 1/4 cup at a time, if you’d like your dish a little looser. Quickly taste a strand of pasta and see if you want to add the remaining lemon juice. Stir in basil or arugula and season generously with salt and pepper.

Serve immediately, drizzling individual portions with a bit of extra olive oil and sprinkling with extra Parmesan cheese.

I got some broccoli, steamed it, and tossed that in to the pasta after both were done to add some veggies to the meal.

broccoli cauliflower pasta

So I swapped dinner with my roommate to cook tonight [edit: Feb 6], Sunday night, and to make things even more out of the ordinary we didn't play Settlers of Catan tonight. Wait, nevermind. We did play Settlers for probably the 84th time since my roommate brought it back from winter break. No, the real way I mixed things up was by using a recipe NOT from Smitten Kitchen. Yes, folks, I acknowledge that other food blogs exist. I always knew it but I saw no reason to change. What are all of those sayings - "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" - and so on. Well, I tend to agree. But so many friends had linked to 101 Cookbooks on my facebook and in emails that I figured I would go peruse their vegetarian dinner options and see if there was something that excited me. I found a recipe accompanied by an interesting description of a school in California, Oxbow School, and decided to give it a try. It was titled "Best School Lunch" and I figured that if students liked it, why wouldn't teachers?

Ingredients (as listed on 101 Cookbooks, I didn't quite have everything)

1 bunch broccoli
1 head cauliflower
2 medium yellow onions
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
A generous pinch of saffron threads
A generous pinch of red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
olive oil as needed
2 tablespoons golden raisins
1/2 cup lightly toasted pine nuts
1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley for garnish
Freshly grated Parmesan, to taste, about 1 cup
1 pound dried pasta
1 cup pasta water, reserved from cooking (may or may not use all of it)


Slice/chop up broccoli and cauliflower into bite size pieces, but keep separate from each other. First, cook broccoli in pan with olive oil and a generous amount of salt to ensure flavor. Once broccoli is cooked (I alternated having a lid on the pan and then stir frying it), pour it into a bowl and repeat the process with the cauliflower.

Meanwhile, boil water and cook pasta.

Cook onions in olive oil (if using onions, I didn't because the grocery store didn't have any fresh) until halfway cooked. Add in garlic, a pinch of saffron, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and some salt. Cook until onions are tender.

Drain pasta and reserve some pasta water. Return pasta to pot, mix in cauliflower, broccoli, and some of the pasta water. Mix in raisins, pine nuts (I used almonds because we didn't have pine nuts), and rosemary. Put on medium low heat for a few minutes and mix. Serve with grated parmesean on top and salt/pepper to taste.

pasta with vodka sauce

One of my favorite pasta sauces is vodka sauce. Actually, every time I have Italian food at my dad's house, they make a really spicy arrabiata sauce, which I can't eat because I am a fairly big wimp when it comes to hot and spicy. So my dad always gets a jar of vodka sauce to make for me, and I am totally happy with that. Now, I like cooking my own food from scratch whenever possible and usually can't find most things pre-made here, so I decided for my Monday night dinner last week, I would make a vodka sauce. Of course, I went to SK first and she had one from Rachel Ray. I was surprised at how much vodka is in the recipe, and while I was cooking, my roommate came in and told me she had tried the same recipe last year and it came out really vodka tasting. That made me even more nervous, but in the end it turned out very delicious and just as it was supposed to taste.

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, once around the pan in a slow stream
1 tablespoon butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 shallots, minced
1 cup vodka
1 cup chicken stock
1 can crushed tomatoes (32 ounces)
Coarse salt and pepper
16 ounces pasta, such as penne rigate
1/2 cup heavy cream
20 leaves fresh basil, shredded or torn

Heat a large skillet over moderate heat. Add oil, butter, garlic, and shallots. Gently saute shallots for 3 to 5 minutes to develop their sweetness. Add vodka to the pan, 3 turns around the pan in a steady stream will equal about 1 cup. Reduce vodka by half, SK says this will take 2 or 3 minutes, I found that I waited longer. Add chicken stock, tomatoes. Bring sauce to a bubble and reduce heat to simmer. Season with salt and pepper.

While sauce simmers, cook pasta in salted boiling water until cooked.

Stir cream into sauce. When sauce returns to a bubble, remove it from heat. Drain pasta. Toss hot pasta with sauce and basil leaves. Impress your roommates and enjoy your delicious dinner!

apple and sage chicken, tomato almond pesto

I cooked two meals this week since one of my roommates is stateside for work, so Sunday night I made Apple and Sage Chicken for my fellow meat eating roommate and two other teachers, I always enjoy a good casual dinner party, and Monday night I made Tomato Almond Pesto for the three remaining housemates. Katie sent me the recipe for the Apple and Sage chicken and when I found out the vegetarian roommate was eating out, I decided to give this a try. I admit that I was hesitant at a couple points along the preparation, partly because I don't cook with meat very often and I would hate to have someone eat improperly cooked meat, and partly because I couldn't tell if my meal was turning out as it should. Once it was served and sampled, though, there were four votes of approval, so now I can advise you to give it a try if you are a meat eater.

My adaptation of the recipe:

650 g chicken tenders (I think - deboned, deskinned slivers of chicken, packaged at the store)
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar (as mentioned before, I have dark brown sugar only)
2 apples (preferably Gala; 3/4 lb total), peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 chopped shallot (or small onion, which I what I had available and used)
2/3 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth (I used a bouillon cube boiled in water)
1 teaspoon cider vinegar (I didn't have cider vinegar so I used white wine vinegar)
1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh sage

I cut the obvious connective tissue and such off the chicken so it was as pretty as raw chicken can get in my hands and patted them dry in a paper towel before laying them out across my cutting boards. I sprinkled them with salt and pepper and then cooked them to about 80% done in olive oil in a frying pan. I had to cook them in two batches so they didn't crowd the pan and when they were finished, I set them on a plate to wait. In the same pan, I put in the butter, onion/shallot, and brown sugar for a minute before adding the apples. I cooked this until the apples were tender and a little brown. Then I added my chicken broth, a splash of vinegar, and the chopped sage. I think I used too much water for my bouillon, expecting more to boil off, but I think the 2/3 cup would be accurate if you measured it. Still, even though mine didn't reduce as much, it still tasted great, so don't worry too much about perfection. After a couple minutes, I put the chicken back on top of the apples and alternated covering the pan with a lid to steam the chicken a bit and taking the lid off to let the sauce reduce. I repeated this process for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

I served it plain in bowls and we ate the entire batch in one sitting - the flavor was really nice, a mixture of sweet apple and slightly of brown sugar with chicken and sage. Everything was soft, tender, and well cooked. I was impressed and it well exceeded my expectations.

When I make this again, I will use less bouillon, as mentioned, in an effort to make it reduce more. There was a lot of sauce, so I served mine with my slotted spoon so that I left the liquid in the pan, but I think the idea is that it is all soaked up and thicker so that it is served together. The original recipe called for chicken legs and thighs with skin, but I don't like cooking with bones and skin, and I am sure there were some differences because of the meat changes.

***

Monday night I made Tomato Almond Pesto from SK and again felt some trepidation as the recipe progressed that it wouldn't taste great, but it turned out all right. Probably not my favorite recipe, but we were all satisfied with the dinner and I always like experimenting a bit.


3/4 cup slivered almonds
1 large handful fresh basil leaves
1 to 2 large garlic cloves
salt
5 tomatoes, cut into chunks
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
1/4 olive oil
1 pound pasta - my package said Vermicelli but it was essentially spaghetti, her recipe used linguine

The first step was to toast the almonds in a skillet - I am not sure I was totally successful, especially as her recipe instructed me to use olive oil and my limited exposure to toasting nuts has been in a dry pan or sheet in the oven, and it seemed like my almonds did not evenly toast. At any rate, it wasn't a disaster but I definitely need to have more finesse. If I had a food processor, I would dump the almonds in, chop them but keep them chunky, remove them, and then chop the basil, garlic, and salt in the processor before adding in the tomatoes, almonds, olive oil, and parmesan to mix them all together.

I do not, however, have a food processor, so I chopped up my almonds by hand and then, as finely as I am comfortable and patient enough to do, chopped my basil, a bit of sage (I still have a lot of fresh sage in the fridge), and the garlic. I mixed the garlic, sage, and basil together in a bowl and then cut up my tomatoes and mixed them in. I grated the parmesan directly into the bowl, eyeing about 1/4 cup, and then used the immersion blender to mix all of that together. I added salt and pepper once it was almost smooth and then mixed by hand. I cooked the pasta between al dente and done, and quickly mixed it in with the pesto, as suggested. I stirred it around a bit before serving it into bowls and grating some more parmesan on top.

And as it is now bedtime for this tired teacher, buona sera!

formative food feelings and recent recipes

Katie told me she's going to do a sort of kitchen survey post soon, which I am excited to see and read, and am planning on piggybacking afterwards, but until then, I just downloaded some recent pictures off my camera and thought I should post them. I know I posted several already from my time cooking here in Bulgaria - vanilla roasted pears, braided lemon bread, tomato and corn pie (what a hit!), homemade pop tarts... I think that's it. Anyway, here at Pink House, the four ladies each have assigned dinner nights so that Sunday through Wednesday, we only cook dinner one night a week and get to have a nice sit down family dinner. It's fun to cook for four people and I quite enjoy the family ambiance - we all sit and discuss our days, funny stories, enjoy eating together, etc. I also am a big fan of tradition in general.

Another thing I wanted to mention after reading Katie's backstory is that my family also was always really insistent upon family dinners. I don't remember them as distinctly before the separation/divorce (I was in 5th grade), but I know they happened every night. After the divorce, they became a really important part of the time spent with whatever parent - Monday nights were always with dad and on a school night, dinner is the main activity, so that became a really big deal with him. Then, when we had weekends with dad - Fri, Sat, Sun - we were pretty much only allowed out one night a weekend (I say we, but I am pretty sure things loosened up a lot for my sister once I moved away to college, but this is all from my perspective, of course) and family dinners were a major thing to be planned in advance. With my mom, while we still alternated weekends, I think more about the regular Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday dinners and having our habitual places at the dinner table, mom next to me, pinching my arm fat or forking my elbows when I talked with my mouth full or put my elbows on the table; Ebe across from mom, facing the kitchen so I could sneak faces at her when I went in for more milk or water. I can't really remember what we ate or too many details other than a few specific nights (once I tried to cook and made a sundried tomato pasta that tasted good but I was miscalculated the portions, so we had a ton of food, and it looked weird and brown and I was eternally teased in my household until I started cooking impressive food recently) and that I definitely argued with my mom a fair amount and thought she was just such an idiot. Now, though, I look back and even though it is all very fuzzy, I appreciate having had spent so much regular time with my family. Even if they aren't spectacular memories, they clearly have made an impression on me because communal dining and having regular dinners with my team in college and friends since has been one of my daily joys.

I also have been thinking quite frequently lately, though I don't think I will go too deeply into it now, that there are a few somewhat negative side effects to this strong family connection to meals and dining. I don't remember really thinking about food or focusing on food much before the divorce - of course, I can't say how much of that is because elementary school kids probably don't think about food much in general as far as nutrition - other than liking Mexican food and queso and ice cream a lot. But after the divorce with mealtime becoming such a major familial act, I feel like I started fixating more on when and what I would eat. On vacations, it is one of the most important aspects -  meal plans, special treats, local cuisine, etc. Sometimes I wish that food wasn't something I loved as much as I do because I think I fixate and depend too much on it for pleasure and fellowship. In college, I thought much less about food than I did in high school or postgraduate life because I was so engaged with crew, classes, and boyfriends that I didn't need food in the same way - I found camaraderie with my team in boats and on the bus, I was intellectually stimulated by professors and in class, I was generally loved and cared for by my boyfriend. But in high school, struggling with dramatic relationships and friendships, not naturally fitting into the social world, denying the difficulties of a divorced household, assuming the roles of head of household well beyond my age and maturity, food was a comfort and a consistent joy. After college, I moved to another country, had a difficult and frustrating job, lived in a narrow and limited social circle, and discovered food as both entertainment and sustenance, as well as one of the few things I could exert any control over in my life. On a more promising note, though, I have found that cooking and interfacing with the sight, smell, and texture of the food throughout the process has heightened the pleasure that I attain from the dining experience and I don't feel the need to keep eating beyond satiation. Also, as I am overall quite happy with my job, living situation, and daily life here in Bulgaria, I am hoping to depend less on food. I do think, though, that I still struggle not having the relationship bonds that I had in college, so I think that is why cooking is something I still really enjoy - even though it's a manual task, it somehow fulfills that absence in my life.

I guess I digressed a lot. My apologies, it's very much a part of my personality to sidetrack, but I am able to assert that I generally am able to get myself back on subject and wrap things up. To prove myself a reliable source, I now give you some pictures:

making granola bars in Pink House kitchen, wearing my roommate's adorable apron

 braided lemon bread

 homemade pop tarts

 zucchini ricotta galette

 chopped garlic, parsley, and romaine and grated parmesan for romaine pesto

 romaine pesto in gutted raw tomato

 tomatoes with romaine pesto

 romaine pesto and egg stuffed tomatoes, ready for baking

 romaine pesto, tomato, and parmesan bruschetta

 romaine pesto and egg stuff tomatoes, bruschetta, and broccoli on a bed of lettuce 

(my monday dinner: sept 27)

 homemade granola muffins - no available baking dishes, so why not?

 homemade pizza dough with improvised romaine and basil pesto

 my Italian host mom's tomato sauce recipe

 pesto and mozzarella pizza, pasta with tomato sauce, and granola muffins

(my monday night dinner: oct 4)

My Italian host mom's tomato sauce recipe, told to me in so many vague words and gestures at our kitchen table in Siena, translated by me from Italian to English:

cover bottom of pan with olive oil 

add 2 chunks of garlic, smushed, and ¼ onion, chopped

add canned tomatoes, with liquid (400 grams), smush into pan (use fork or other utensil to smash tomatoes up in pan)

boil/cook for 15 minutes

add oregano and basil, salt and pepper to taste

Sometimes I add fresh basil with the tomatoes, caramelize the onions first, or add mushrooms with the onions. I have also made this when I didn't have canned tomatoes by boiling fresh tomatoes in a little water and adding some regular tomato paste if available. This takes a little longer, but it still makes a decent tomato sauce. I have read other recipes for making tomato sauce using fresh tomatoes that you blanch and then peel and deseed, so that is another option. I find that the longer and slower you cook the sauce, especially with fresh basil and well cooked onions, the better it tastes. Regardless, it is generally a crowd pleaser.