San Marzano Sauce - Revisited

Yesterday was a day of reviewing school supplies and seeing what needs to be purchased, what can be borrowed from the library, finally felting my wool dryer balls...well, it was a busy day.  A good time to revisit the San Marzano Sauce recipe.  This time I only had 1 onion on hand and I had whole grain linguine.   I decided to go ahead with it anyway.  There was enough onion, but having that second onion would have been nice.  I like the flavor of the sauce.  I'm not sure what I think about the whole grain pasta though.  It's not bad, just different.  It makes a heavier pasta.  I admittedly like a softer pasta that is more delicate in texture and flavor.  When making the sauce, I would recommend not rinsing the cans of tomatoes into the sauce, but rather use a spatula to scrape the residual sauce from the can into the pan.  Rinsing just waters down the sauce too much.  I also recommend making sure you cut the root off well.  If some of the root is still left there, the onion will stick together and won't separate after stirring.

 I had gotten the whole grain pasta on sale and with a coupon, ending up paying about $.40 for the box.  San Marzano tomatoes run $2 - $3 a can.  I don't remember what I spent on the onion.  The stick of butter was around $.40.  That makes less than $7 for this main dish to feed a family of 8.  Not bad!  The baby certainly liked it.  She kept handing her fork back to me for more until Steve pulled out some Italian ice for her to try.  I bought that on sale, a package of 6 servings for $1.99.  For some reason, we have a green vegetable on occasion with pasta, but not always.  I figure it's okay, because we are eating tomatoes and canned tomatoes are just as good as fresh.  I think I heard that canned tomatoes are higher in antioxidants.  Good enough for me!

San Marzano Sauce with Linguine a la Nicholas Sparks

I finished reading True Believer by Nicholas Sparks on Sunday. I really enjoyed the book. In the story, the main characters eat an authentic San Marzano pasta sauce with linguine. It sounded so simple and yet divine, that I just had to try it. All it is, is two large cans of San Marzano tomatoes, 1 stick of butter and 2 onions cut in half. Bring to a boil and then turn down to low and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. I cut the onions in half across the width. It smelled insane!

The San Marzano tomatoes were whole, so I thought that over the 1 1/2 hours of simmering that they would breakdown a bit and they did. I thought it was interesting to put the onions in the sauce in the large halves. I used Vidalia onions. I thought that the onions would soften up and maybe separate during the simmering. Pretty good guess! Not all of the onion separated, but enough did. I would have never put onions in like that, except that the character of the book stated that dicing the onions would ruin the sauce that she learned to make from her restaurant owning grandmother. The onions had a texture that no store bought sauce could match! It was so good! Apparently, I was raving about it through dinner...at least that what my daughter said!

I served the pasta with a salad and biscuits. I will definitely be making this again!