Marcella's Tomato Sauce

 

Marcella's Tomato Sauce

From Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

 

I'm 75% Italian and John is 25%, which means in a generation of mutts, we'll be producing 50% Italian kids one day - not too shabby!  But this means that it's pretty likely our kids will one day ask us for some classic Italian family recipes...so I guess it's time to make some up!

 

This marinara sauce by Marcella Hazan is seriously so outrageously good and simple that I'm happy to pretend that she's in my family for eternity.  In her book she states that her Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter is "an unsurpassed sauce for potato gnocchi", so we looked no further and paired it with her gnocchi recipe.  Our gnocchi still needs works, so I'll save that post for another day, but this sauce is delectable as written, and may well be our family sauce for generations to come.

 

We've also had it on meatball subs, for breakfast in Eggs in Purgatory, and of course over spaghetti, and it is ALWAYS perfect.

 

Ingredients

• 2 cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice (we use San Marzanos)
• 5 tbsp butter
• 1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half
• salt, to taste

Preparation

1. Place tomatoes, butter, onion halves and salt in a saucepan.
2. Cook uncovered at a very slow but steady simmer for 45 minutes.
3. Stir from time to time, mashing any large pieces of tomato with the back of a wooden spoon.
4. Taste and correct for salt, discard onion.

Serves 6.

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Papaya Soup

 

Papaya Soup
From Taveuni Palms Resort

 

Well, the wedding day came and went, the honeymoon, sadly, is over, and it's onto real life.  On the plus side, that means honeymoon kitchen can officially begin!  Our very first recipe is actually cheating, sort of.  Being us, we couldn't stand to let a whole two weeks go by without ANY cooking, so we took a little cooking lesson from the staff at our phenomenal resort in Taveuni, Fiji (Taveuni Palms - seriously, heaven).  We learned to make one of the most amazing soups I've ever had, with a fruit that we don't use very often here in the states.  But since papaya is fairly easy to find if you look around, I decided it was appropriate to feature a recipe we actually made on our honeymoon, as the very first for honeymoon kitchen.  Enjoy!

 

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed and minced
• 2-3 Thai chilis, or other chilis, to taste, minced
• 1 medium, ripe papaya, scooped out of skin
• 1 tsp chicken boulion
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 13.66 oz can coconut milk
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preparation

1. Saute butter, onion, garlic, and chilis in large sauce pan over medium high until soft.
2. Add papaya, chicken base and water and boil for 2 minutes.
3. Remove from heat until cool.
4. Blend the heck out of it until smooth - seriously people, put the blender on and do some dishes - you want it to be like velvet.
5. Return to pan over medium heat.
6. Add coconut milk, salt and pepper to taste.
7. Heat until warm enough to eat.

Serves 4.

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