Back to tales from the kitchen

It has been over two weeks since seeing Alton Brown in person at the Smithsonian and finally telling him about my little blog and fan website for him. And as much as I hope AB likes what I’m doing here, I need to stop fantasizing that he gives a flying rat’s behind about either of them and get back to more important things… like talking about trying recipes and food!

Last week I tried AB’s pantry friendly tomato sauce for the first time. I was making Eggplant Parmesan and needed a tomato sauce. Now, as much as this pains me to say, I typically turn to a jarred pasta sauce for spaghetti. Not that I haven’t made my own sauce for spaghetti and pizza, its just the jar is so much more convenient. And sometimes I need that. But it takes me at least an hour to make my spaghetti, even from a jarred sauce, so its more about having it on hand than time saving.

But this time, I didn’t want jarred sauce or even my canned tomato sauce concoction. No, I wanted real honest to goodness tomato sauce. Of course, I looked to AB for guidance on the subject. The sauce from Pantry Raid II has long been on that list of recipes to attempt. Since I was looking for a sauce, why not try it?

While the eggplant parm turned out mighty fine, the true discovery was the tomato sauce. It may have been some of the best I’ve ever tasted. I quickly began contemplating other ways to highlight this wonderful new find.

It came to me a few days later… spaghetti and meatballs. I rarely make such a thing, but something told me this was the perfect application for this sauce. To the horror of Italian chefs everywhere, I can just hear Giada De Laurentiis over enunciating some Italian swear word in my direction or Mario Batali cringing in his orange Crocs at the mere mention of the dish, but I like it and wanted to make it! I don’t care. Even dear AB has bad-mouthed cooking meatballs in red sauce but they’re my meatballs and I’m cooking them this way.

Anyway, back to the tomato sauce. In actuality the recipe is simple. A basic mirepoix with garlic is sweated until the veggies are soft. Then seeded can tomatoes added, two 28 ounce cans. The liquid from the tomatoes is placed into a sauce pan along with herbs, sherry vinegar and sugar and reduced to half. The veggies are broiled for 15-20 until caramelized a bit. After that, 1/2 cup of white wine is added to the roasting pan and cooked for 2-3 minutes. Add the reduced liquid and buzz up with a stick blender. I decided upon ultra smooth for my sauce.

With sauce in hand, well in bowl, I delved into making meatballs. They would not be from AB or any TV chef or cookbook for that matter, no these beauties are from the my brain. Scary as that seems, they are pretty good. And simple too. I did decide to use AB’s baking technique for them. I placed 24 balls o’ meat into mini muffin tins and baked away. I loved how they came out and will be using that method again. Plus, I bought mini muffin tins some time ago to try cooking them this way so I have to keep doing it that way.

After the meatballs cooked, they went into the now warmed tomato sauce. Next came a bed of spaghetti with the sauce and meatballs. Topped with fresh mozzarella cheese, the plates baked for a few minutes to make the cheese melty and gooey. Mmm.