It’s Marcella Hazan’s!
I make a mean meat sauce. and it takes hours to prepare and makes a mess. One day i had to whip up something fast for someone who didn’t like anything spicy. Using the Barbara Kafka concept of high temperature roasting i simply put Olive oil, garlic, onion and tomatoes into a dutch oven and roasted it at 500 degrees until it was done. Little mess, easy preparation and it was wholesomely good. I did this 10 years ago and have been making it regularly ever since.
Yesterday, while driving home i was listening to “The Splendid Table” on NPR and several famous chefs were talking about a 58 year old chef who wrote a cookbook with unusual techniques and became famous. Her name was Marcella Hazan. These chefs waxed adoringly about how great, simple and unique her Tomato Sauce is. They said her book and recipe’s transformed how Italian food is cooked. The recipe and technique sounds similar to what I was doing, pure ingredients and minimally processed. This recipe can show what a difference process can make.
I’m going to try it today. Here’s the recipe as retold by on of the chefs:
- Dump a can of San Marzano tomatoes in a cold pot.
- slice an onion in half.
- 5 tablespoons of butter (76 Grams).
- simmer for 45 minutes uncovered.
- taste and correct with salt.
- remove and discard the onion.
They were raving about how the process is essential and the butter somehow pulls the sweetness out of the onion. The difference between Hazan’s recipe and mine is she uses butter instead of olive oil, and low temperature simmer instead of high temperature roasting. I’m betting her’s will be better.
Can’t wait to try- here goes.
This is a true 3 ingredient dish
even though it’s a sauce
Photo by Dan Scolnick
The prep took about 1 minute
Starting from cold
Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce
Photo by Dan Scolnick
And here we go.
It’s done.
didn’t even splatter the stove.
Photo by Dan Scolnick
With the Onion removed
as per the recipe
but i’m not going to discard it.
Photo by Dan Scolnick
I don’t think i need another recipe. This tomato sauce has “mouth”. it feels silky to the tongue, it has a depth of sweetness. A great recipe. It’s truely amazing what the simplest ingredients and minimal processing can create. 
Finished with 6 year old Parmigiano Reggiano I imported myself from Emilia-Romagna.
Fast, Neat, Easy, Delicious, Nutritious
Photo by Dan Scolnick
It is butter, tomatoes and an onion cut in half, just add a little heat. It barely needed any salt at all.
Truely Astounding Flavor.
IKnowTheCow 
Except for the cheese at the end, it looks/sounds good. Except for mozzarella on some dishes, I’m not a fan of cheese. Something about it’s aroma and “mouth.” But I love a well made tomato sauce, with or without meat.
Recently I made a batch using a mix of a quart of plum tomatoes I’d harvested and frozen last year, and three quarts of canned tomatoes (all were plum tomato, one was whole, one was diced, one was pureed). My cooking method was a lot different than described here, and no butter. But all ingredients as pure as available!
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