Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Update Simple Tomato Sauce - Monacilioni Style.md
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
  • Loading branch information
AaronTraas authored Jan 17, 2024
1 parent a508d68 commit 9017eaf
Showing 1 changed file with 1 addition and 1 deletion.
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion Recipes/Simple Tomato Sauce - Monacilioni Style.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ Not traditional, but better if you're serving a small group: a skillet to medium
- **Tomatoes:** The quality of the tomatoes is the single most important thing for this dish. Use fresh tomatoes if and only if they are high-quality and fully ripe. Ideal types of tomatoes are roma or other plum tomatoes, and some heirloom varieties. You want a high flesh to seed ratio. Most grocery store tomatoes are picked green, and turn red when shipping and exposed to ethelene gas. They never fully ripen, and are thus too firm, vegetal tasting, and not suffciently sweet. Quality canned tomatoes (whole or crushed) are better than under-ripe fresh tomatoes.
- **Processing tomatoes:** Crushed tomatoes are fine, but whole are typically better (note: I typically use crushed because I'm lazy). If using whole fresh tomatoes, blanch and peel them. Run whole fresh or canned tomatoes through a food mill, or puree in a blender.
- **Heat Management:** It is important to control your heat. You don't want much in the way of maillard flavors here; you are sweating, not browning the aromatics, and you are gently simmering the tomato sauce to meld the flavors together and evaporate excess moisture. You absolutely want to simmer on low heat, and stir frequently. Onions and tomatoes are high in sugar, and thus it's easy to scortch the bottom of the pan, which will make a bitter, acrid sauce.
- **Alcohol:** I typically use either wine or vodka—this is the biggest variation from my nonna's sauce. The primary purpose is to dissove and make available some alcohol-solueable flavors in the tomatoes. Wine also adds more fruit and acidity. Most white wines will do, so long as they aren't overly sweet. For red wines, most middle-of-the-road red wines are fine, as long as you avoid overly sweet or tanic reds. I typically go for cheap Spanish or Portuguese reds, or cheap chianti or pino noir. If you have a bottle you want to serve with dinner, use that.
- **Alcohol:** I typically use either wine or vodka—this is the biggest variation from my nonna's sauce. The primary purpose is to dissove alcohol-solueable flavors in the tomatoes. Wine also adds more fruit and acidity. Most white wines will do, so long as they aren't overly sweet. For red wines, most middle-of-the-road red wines are fine, as long as you avoid overly sweet or tanic reds. I typically go for cheap Spanish or Portuguese reds, or cheap chianti or pino noir. If you have a bottle you want to serve with dinner, use that. Alcohol is added during the simmer step, and is not used to deglaze the pan. There should be no *fond* in the pan, if you've managed your heat properly.

* * *

Expand Down

0 comments on commit 9017eaf

Please sign in to comment.