Homemade Marinara! aka "Red Sauce" or "Italian Gravy"

Ever since my wife started growing San Marzano tomatoes in our garden, I've been tweaking my recipe for "Simple Marinara."  Well, after 4 years of such tweaking, I think I'm finally ready to share it with the world (or at least with my own corner of the internet)!

Marinara for 150, anyone?

 

I don't have a ton of pictures of this recipe because it's very simple... There are very few steps, but I'll write them (below) carefully, providing any tips I've learned along the way.

You Will Need:

• 4lbs fresh or canned Roma, "Plum," or San Marzano tomatoes
• 1 Cup Chianti or your favorite fruity white wine
• 1/2 Cup finely shredded and diced carrots (very thin, very small, super tiny bits)
  
• 2 Tbsp dried Basil
• 2 Tbsp dried Oregano
• 2 Tbsp Sugar
• 3 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 whole bulb of Garlic
• 2 6oz can tomato paste
• 1 tsp jalapeno powder
• 2 Tsp Salt
• 2 Tsp Pepper

My first "note" is that this recipe is extremely scalable.  I've cut it half, and I've multiplied it to feed 150 people!  I recommend weighing out your supply of tomatoes and then doing the math from there.  OR, if you only have 3lbs of fresh tomatoes, add another pound of tomatoes from a can and go from there.  Whatever you decide to do, you should always start with the weight of the tomatoes.

The question I always get is, "What kind of tomatoes should I use?"  It's a legit question.  The answer lies in the texture and firmness of the tomato flesh, rather than the taste of the tomato itself.  Take another look at the sauce in the picture above.  It's thick enough to allow the spoon to stand on it's own, and that's critical!  NOBODY likes a thin soupy watery sauce; SO, start with a thick firm tomato.  Roma tomatoes are perfect.  So are San Marzano tomatoes.  Basically any "plum" type of tomato that is heavy for it's size and has very thick walls.

Steps:

1. 
   Get 4lbs of tomatoes into a large pot.  If you are using fresh tomatoes, cut them in half and pull out the juice and seeds with your fingers.  If you're using canned tomatoes, just dump them into the pot.  Use a stick blender (or food processor) to puree everything into a fairly thick pulp.  Do NOT be afraid to use canned tomatoes!  Tomatoes can very well and they already have the water and seeds removed!
   
2. Add the olive oil, the wine and the carrots.  The carrots will basically cook themselves out of the sauce, leaving behind their sugars and a nice aroma.  The wine is key.  If you use a red, it will give the sauce depth.  If you use a white, it will give the sauce a mysterious fruity flavor.  I like white.  Bring the sauce up to a boil and then reduce it to a gentle simmer.  Stir it and let the wine reduce and the sauce thicken a bit.  Also, you might take the time to realize that you just opened a fresh bottle of wine but you only used a relatively small amount for the sauce.  You might as well get your money's worth and pour yourself a glass to have while you stir...
   
3. Add the basil, oregano, and sugar.  Stir it all in and bump the heat just a bit to a slightly more aggressive simmer.  You want it to bubble, but you don't want it to bubble up and out of the pot all over everything.. Stir and cook it for about 5 minutes.  Your goal is to re-hydrate the herbs.  When your kitchen starts to smell like an Italian kitchen, reduce the heat back to a low gentle simmer.  Add the tomato paste and stir it in.  Cover with a lid and turn your attention to the garlic.
4. Peel, smash, and dice an entire bulb of garlic into as fine a dice as you can.  Deploy a very angry "Smash and Slice" mentality!  Fresh garlic is important here, don't use powder or dried garlic!  Remember, "Good stuff in, means good stuff out!"  Add it to the sauce, stir it in, put the lid back on, and simmer it for thirty minutes.
5. Ready?  Give it another stir and taste it!!  Does it need salt?  Add a bit.  Pepper?  Same.
6. Now, for the secret ingredient... I like to add just a touch of jalapeno powder.  Where do you get it?  Well, I make my own and I make a lot of it so send me a DM if you're local, but you can get it on Amazon...  I like a spicy marinara.  To achieve this, most cooks add red pepper flakes.  The problem is, red pepper flakes can overwhelm a sauce and cover up the herbs, garlic, and those fruity wine notes you worked so hard to get.  I will add just a light sprinkle of an angry chili powder, to bring a latent eye-popping "wow" to the mix.  Not so much that the sauce gets "hot," just enough to make your tongue want to know "what else is going on in there?!"
7. That's it, and that's all!  Give it a final stir and eat it.  Or pour it into jars. This 4lb recipe will make 11 servings, 3/4 Cup each.  I recently scaled this up to a batch of 50lbs of tomatoes to make sauce for a spaghetti dinner fundraiser and according to the math, it should have been 147 servings.  We had 145 people show up, and everything worked out perfectly!

 

Turkey Pot Pie (or Chicken Pot Pie; you pick!)

No matter how fancy your palette may be, once in awhile we all crave something simple that reminds of our childhood and for my money, Turkey Pot Pie is hard to beat!

I have many thoughts about pot-pie.  They should be super creamy, and without potatoes!  I seem to remember (growing up) that the cheaper pot-pies always had tons of potatoes and less meat.  That's just wrong!  Let's fix this:

You Will Need (for TWO pies):

• 2 deep dish pie crusts (9" or bigger, thawed and unrolled)
  
• 2 Large Squares of Frozen puff pastry dough (thawed and unrolled)
  
• 1 Stick Butter
  
• 1 Cup finely diced red onion
• 1 Cup finely diced carrots
• 1 Cup finely diced celery
• 4 Cups leftover turkey, (I like Smoked) light and dark meat, diced or shredded (or both!)
• 1/2 c. flour
• 4 Cups Turkey (or Chicken) Stock
• 1.5 Cups heavy cream (No substitutions!)
  
• 2 Cups frozen peas (set out to room temp)
  
• 3 Tsp Thyme
  
• Salt and pepper to taste

Set the oven to 400 degrees!  While it's pre-heating, let's assemble... For this recipe it is extremely helpful to have all of your ingredients pre-measured!  Get everything diced, shredded, measured out and ready to go before you light the burner, it will make everything so much easier later, because things happen fast!

Drop your stick of butter in a dutch oven or very large pan.  If you're paying attention to my pictures, you'll notice that I had to switch pans midstream... It was a Rookie Mistake and it will NOT happen again!  I mean, I have at least four dutch ovens, what was I thinking?  sigh.  I digress.  Melt your butter and saute the carrots, onions, and celery over medium-high heat until they're tender.

When the veggies are nice and tender, drop in the turkey meat and stir to combine.  Now sprinkle the flour over the entire mixture and stir it in very well.  Stir continuously for about 5 minutes.  When you detect a faint "nutty" aroma from the flour starting to cook, pour in your turkey stock. 

 

Once the turkey stock is in, do NOT stop stirring!  You don't want to give the flour a chance to clump.  Flour abjectly refuses to play along with liquids unless you dissolve it first in some fat (like you did with the butter).  So cook and stir stir stir until you have a nice thick bubbly mixture like you see in this video (above).

Pour in the heavy cream and the peas.  Keep stirring and reduce the heat to medium.  Keep stirring for 5-10 minutes while this final mix thickens!  Then kill the heat and move your pot to a safe place on the counter where you can scoop the goodness out and into your pie-shells.

If you follow this blog, then you know I HATE making pie-crust.  To those who enjoy it, I salute you!  For these pot-pies, I bought two frozen pie crusts, and two frozen Puff-Pastry squares.  Press the pie crusts into your own pie pans.  Use a measuring cup to scoop the goodness into the pie shell.  

Now then; gently lay the square of puff pastry over the top.  Cut the corners so that the pastry fits the top of your pie, and press the pastry dough into the pie crust,  Take you time and do the best you can.  Cut two slits on the top for the steam to vent.

Slide both pies into the middle of your hot oven, and place a cookie sheet in the rack below the pie.  The goodness will want so badly to escape and it will bubble out between the pie layers and land below.  The problem with the pie goodness is, it has cream.  Cream is dairy, dairy has sugar, and sugar will burn... So catch whatever goodness sneaks out on a sheet pan so it doesn't burn all over the bottom of your oven!

Give the pies 30-40 minutes in the oven.  The pastry dough will puff and rise and everything will turn golden brown!  Pull them out and let them cool and "Set" for about an hour.  Then it's all over but for the scooping and eating!  My oh my, sho am good...