“Simple doesn’t mean easy,” Marcella Hazan wrote in
2004, a quote widely cited to explain her cooking style and influence.“I can describe simple cooking thus: Cooking that is stripped all the way down to those procedures and those ingredients indispensable in enunciating the sincere flavor intentions of a dish.”
In her famous tomato
sauce, all you do is simmer tomatoes for 45 minutes with butter and a split
onion. The full, true tomato flavor is a revelation, as is finding out you don’t
need to cook in layers of garlic and herbs to get there (and you’re better off
without them).
The recipe has found new life online, as bloggers
have zeroed in on the fact that Hazan’s recipe is well suited to a can of whole,
peeled tomatoes. It does make an excellent year-round sauce that way. But fresh
tomatoes are really just better—they turn into sauce that tastes like pure
summer, to stock your freezer.
Unless you like a sauce with lots of texture,
they’ll require one extra, rather satisfying step: peeling. See
the genius techniques at right for your options. You then simmer away with the
swirling butter and bobbing onion, until “the fat floats free from the
tomato”—which, of course, you should just stir back in. Then Hazan has you
remove the onion, but it’s too good not to eat—in the pasta or on its
own.
Serves 6
2 pounds (900g) fresh, ripe
tomatoes, prepared as described at right, or 2 cups (480g) canned imported
Italian tomatoes, cut up, with their juice
5 tablespoons (70g)
butter
1 medium onion, peeled and cut in
half
Salt
1 to 1½ pounds (450 to 680g)
pasta, cooked, for serving
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
cheese, for serving
1 Put either the prepared fresh tomatoes or the canned
in a saucepan; add the butter, onion, and salt; and cook, uncovered, at a very
slow, but steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until it is thickened to your
liking and the fat floats free from the tomato. Stir from time to time, mashing
up any large pieces of tomato with the back of a wooden spoon.
2 Taste and correct for salt. Discard the onion before
tossing with pasta. Serve with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese for the
table.
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