Tomato sauce, ragus, pizza, brrr its getting cold.

 Look at those clouds, arent they just the fluffiest looking things in the world? My goodness, P town a few days ago had perhaps one of the nicest days for the fall season. Too bad its slowly going away - the a couple of trees are starting to look extremely sad and I've had to add an extra layer of clothes on to me. Oh yea and the sickening frost is out in the morning, how terrible!

Never mind, a very recent efficient shopping trip got me a couple of things which I've been meaning to do: tomato sauce, stock, pizza dough, perhaps a ragu for pasta - things that can keep and be frozen easily. What I like to do is basically make a relatively large batch of these essentials which I feel enhance or act as a base for most meals that can be popped in the microwave for 2 - 4 mins and you just saved yourself 30 mins making something from scratch. Also its somewhat cheaper and better tasting then the store bought stuff. Below is the pot of tomato sauce I made, marinara sauce as Americans would  call it.

Let's see, if I calculated it correctly, that pot you see below shouldn't have cost me more then $5 and that's enough sauce to last me for at least another 2 weeks or so. I mean, as much as I like it, I'm not sure if I want to eat it at every meal. The 'recipe' I'm going to give you below is a very rough  guide of what I like to do. There are always extra things you can add in or leave out, it's really all up to personal taste.

Big pot of tomato/marinara sauce
1-2 Large Onions
As much Garlic as you want (I'm a garlic fiend so i used like a billion cloves)
1    Can of anchovies in oil (Optional... but.... i think its much better with it)
1-2 Generous thbps of oil (whatever you like - if you have, use bacon fat, or duck fat. Er.. whatever fat that you think is tasty)
1-2 Carrots 
1-2 Celery Sticks
3-4 Bay Leaves
1.5 Thbps of tomato paste
4 Dried shitake mushrooms re-hydrated in hot water for a couple of mins, or any fungi you can find although if your using something like button mushrooms just use the stalks.
3 Big cans of crushed/whole tomatoes (up to you, it's all gonna break down)
1 Cup/glass of wine
As much as you want of Herbs (rosemary, parsley, tarragon, thyme etc. Any 'hard' herbs are good for this 'long' kind of cooking. I had parsley stalks lying around going limp so they went in. If you want to get all fancy make a bouquet garni but i just fish it out when I'm done).

Other good stuff you could add in
I was thinking oyster sauce?
Bacon - fry the bacon first, drain, reserve and sweat the vegetables in the fat.
Sausage meat - same as above but your basically making a meat sauce then.
Other dried mushrooms - whatever you can find, the umami flavor from them is fantastic.
Tamarind paste - I think this would add a definite tang to the sauce and at the same time, a sweetness most people won't be able to place.
Paprika - I saw some in the cabinet, so why not
Stock - If you can, always use stock in replace of water. I use a stock cube cause, you know, I have other things to do also.
Citrus peel - lemon peel, lime peel gives it a nice refreshing kick


So, if your using the bacon, see above, if not, put your fat into a nice big pot, hopefully one that won't burn easily over medium high heat. Dice your onions, garlic, carrots, celery as fine as possible - it's not a stew remember, its a sauce. Add the onions and garlic in first along with the bay leaves and your anchovies, oil and all. Sweat and stir around for let's say 4 or so mins. The anchovies should be giving off a really tasty salty smell right now. Mmmmm... Toss in your carrots, celery and mushrooms and whatever herbs you've found in the cabinet. Now you basically want to saute all this good stuff until some caramalization is happening at the bottom of your pot. If it doesn't, no problem, just wait until everything is looking kinda nice and brown or when you think, "hold on, my stuff is gonna start burning" and then deglaze the pot with your glass of wine leaving some for yourself after. Let the alcohol burn off for a bit so you can turn the heat to high for like a min or two. At this point throw in your stock cube and your canned tomatoes and stir. Put the lid on and let it come to the boil, after that, turning the heat down to a low simmer. Put the lid on but let it sit so that some steam escapes (as in not a full seal) and do something else - wash up or whatever. Just stir the thing every so often to make sure nothing is burning at the bottom.

 

Now it's basically up to you to how thick you like your sauce - naturally the longer you let it cook the thicker its gonna get. If it's too reduce, dilute it with stock or water if you must. At this point you should probably taste the sauce for seasoning so go ahead and add as much salt and pepper as you like. Deploy as needed and when necessary. I like to keep this stuff by putting it in ziplock bags - get the small sandwich sized ones (like a 100 in a box) and they make relatively good serving sizes per bag if you fill them up to about just a little more then half of the bag. I store my sauce in the plastic 'box' container thing that I buy my salad mix in after I'm done with it.

So the other day at an open lab, some guy walked in with a slice of pizza at about 2pm or so. I'm thinking to myself... you know what, a pizza might be very good for dinner I feel. So I took the recipe from Epicurious which i think is a fairly easy dough to make with ingredients that aren't too hard to get and put some of my sauce (ah ha!) with some salami and salad greens. I didn't have any cheese which made me somewhat sad, but I discovered that putting salad greens on top of your pizza (which went into the oven at a blazing 550F on top of a cast iron pan that has been sitting in there for like 20mins that is now my "pizza stone", gives the greens this flavor very similar to dried seaweed. I'm talking about lettuce, rocket, spinach - that sorta stuff. Highly enjoyable. 

The dough however is nothing special and gives off a bit of a biscuity like texture after baking. I'm no pizza expert but I feel that the doughs which have a bit more chew require some extra kneading and stronger flour then I can be bothered with.

 The pizza dough which I just froze from the leftovers, I deployed again with the tomato sauce, this time however making a sort of a ragu with pork riblets (cheapest cut I could find at winco) that made a very satisfying stew. Anyway, rolled out the dough, sauce/stew/ragu, Boursin herb cheese which i found in the fridge, mushrooms and thinly sliced radishes gave us this result. I just love the earthiness of the mushrooms with the refreshing crunch of the radishes whilst the cheese imparts this creaminess that just puts so much depth into the ragu. Mmmmmm