Mastering the Craft I

I'm going to call this series, "Mastering the Craft." It will follow my journey of perfecting my cooking skills. Everyone knows that I'm no amateur in the kitchen. I would love to believe that I'm above average, but I know that some days I'm worse than others. I'm always learning. I follow several food blogs (slashfood is my favorite ^_^) and am constantly looking for new recipes to try (even if I have to hold the recipes until I get a real oven).

Today I was making my infamous meatball subs. I've never used a written recipe, just whatever feels right. Every time I make the sauce a little bit different, because I've never been able to get a really good tomato sauce for pasta/everything else. Today I managed to get it perfect. Now I just have to figure out what I did so I can do it over and over again.

I fell in love with an organic tomato basil sauce that I bought at a regular grocery store. It was the perfect blend of tomato and spices, albeit short on the spiciness department. I haven't really been able to recreate it in a way that I enjoyed, until today. Lots of oregano and basil. A teaspoon of garlic powder, a large pinch of sage and a small one of crushed red pepper. 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 small onion, 2 large cloves of garlic, 1 jar of tomato sauce (I think that would be equal to 1.5 cans of sauce in the US). 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and a pinch of salt. The secret? 1.5 teaspoons of sugar. I was amazed at the difference.

I cooked the onions and garlic in some olive oil with a little salt an pepper, then added just the diced tomatoes and all the seasonings. Cooked until the liquid was gone and it was basically a thin paste. Turn off the burner and let it cool. Toss it in a food processor and grind it a few times so the onions, garlic and tomatoes are just chopped up a little bit more. Toss it back in the pan, add the sauce and the sugar. I usually end up adding a little bit of water to rinse out the jar of sauce, maybe 1/2 cup tops. Cook it to get rid of the excess water, serve over anything.

I'm not a master, but I'm getting there slowly. It's fun to experiment and hopefully you'll get to see a lot more of these entries as I try more and more new things.