#cooking things

[ID: 4 coloured bread balls shaped in oval wedges in a standard loaf pan. A red one with whole grains with little spikes cut into it. A dark rye purple one that is smooth and flat. A sprouted wheat blue one with two curved slashes. And a sourdough yellow/orange one with circles pressed into it. End ID]

Oh I'm so glad. Thank you for reading! I know Rose isn't much of cook, but things like soup are pretty straightforward.

I save the carcas from my Thanksgiving turkey every year and make soup with the leftover bones.

But more frequently, I make pasta sauce. Since I currently work from home, it's easy to do an all day sauce, and the bade ingredients are simple, though I do throw in a few special things if they're lying around.

So in the spirit of a quiet Sunday morning, here's how I, a Jewish American woman with not a single lick of Italian lineage, make a simple pasta sauce:

Let some olive oil get hot in your sauce pot (I use a Dutch oven usually) and add chopped onions. Let them get tender before adding your garlic and let that get fragrant.

Add tomato paste and, if you have it, either anchovy paste or miso paste (this makes the sauce vegetarian and adds umami while mellowing out the tomato. I know it sounds weird but it works).

Once a fond starts to build up on the bottom of your pot, add crushed tomatoes (San marzano if you can but whatever you got) and your diced tomatoes. If you've got fresh, those also work but take longer to break down and can be pricy sometimes.

If you have other veg to add like mushrooms or carrots, throw them in now. Then goes your worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, oregano, marjoram, Italian seasoning or whatever you have. Sometimes, if I have it on hand I'll throw in a small hunk of parmessan cheese.

Let it all come to a boil and then set your heat to low and let it simmer until dinnertime. Check it every little while to give it a stir. I found that the stove in my new place runs hotter than the one in my last apartment, so I had to baby the sauce more. I'll cook it for less time next time I make it.