Marinara Sauce

I have been wanting to make marinara sauce for some time now and especially when I can get tomatoes for cheap at Haymarket, I knew I had to make it. I will recommend that you should use very ripe plum tomatoes and don't make the same mistake I did by using semi-green and fairly firm ones. The recipe is very simple, you will need about 3 lbs of ripe plum tomatoes, some olive oil, basil, and garlic. Season the sauce to your liking.

In a large pot of water blanch your tomatoes until you can peel the skin off pretty easily.



It should look like this. Remove the tomatoes from pot and peel.



Once peeled, throw the tomatoes back into the pot and add 1/2 cup of water. Cook on low-medium heat. You will want to use some kind of masher to help break up the tomatoes. It should become quite easy when the tomatoes have been simmering for some time.



Grab a bunch of basil and a few cloves of garlic and throw it into your food processor with about 2T of olive oil. Pulse for a bit until finely chopped. Pour this into your marinara sauce. Ahh, doesn't that smell wonderful?



After about an hour on low-medium heat, it should reduce down to this texture. If you want a very garlicky taste, throw it some minced garlic, cook for about 5-10 minutes, then serve immediately. The sauce is not as red because one, I didn't use ripe tomatoes and two, I used way more basil then I should have. However, it tastes and smells delicious. I can't wait to have it tonight.