Cover of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
This next entry in my favorite recipes comes from Marcella Hazan‘s excellent cookbook, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. If you love Italian food, this is the only Italian cookbook you need, in my opinion. I have made many of the pasta sauces, and they were all great. Unfortunately, I’ve cut way back on the pasta I’m eating these days.
My husband declared this tomato sauce with onion and butter to be one of the best pasta sauces he’d ever tasted. It is superbly simple to make, even easier than my go-to tomato sauce. This sauce has a light, subtle flavor that tastes best on hearty but bland filled pastas, like potato gnocchi and cheese ravioli, but is also very good on spaghetti.
I suggest using pureed tomatoes, but you can also use canned whole tomatoes and crush them with the back of a spoon while the sauce is cooking. This will result in a “chunkier” tomato sauce, though. Bionaturae is my favorite brand of bottled strained tomatoes.
Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter
- 1 bottle strained tomatoes(24 oz.) or 2 cups fresh tomatoes, pureed
- 5 tbsp. butter
- 1 med. onion, peeled and cut in half
- Salt
- 1½ pounds pasta
- Parmesan cheese
Put the tomato sauce, butter, onion and salt in a saucepan. Cook, uncovered, at a slow but steady simmer for 45 minutes, stirring from time to time. Discard the onion before tossing with the pasta. Leftover sauce may be frozen without the onion.
Tagged: Italian, Marcella Hazan, Pasta, Tomato sauce
[...] The Easiest Tomato Sauce for Pasta (simplycooking.wordpress.com) [...]
I think i’m going to like this recipe because it doesn’t require a ton of ingredients. Thank you for sharing it!
[...] The Easiest Tomato Sauce for Pasta (simplycooking.wordpress.com) [...]
I am used to cooking something similar to this, although I don’t use pureed tomatoes. Instead I use fresh tomatoes, peel them, remove the seeds and cut the rest into tiny pieces. Plus I love to add some cream cheese into the sauce when it’s almost done, because in my case, there is never enough cheese in my sauce & pasta!
I’m surprised at the lack of basil or oregano, and garlic. Hmmm…
It has a very pure, light flavor. Try it.
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