Tomato Sauce for Pasta

[Blether]

Thanks, Erin -- I was hoping you'd see this post. I knew you'd remember the details of Marcella's recipe much better than I could! - L.

I'm sure Nakji knows this, but Marcella of course gives recipes for a number of tomato sauces, beginning roughly with:

Tomato, garlic, basil & olive oil (well-flavoured, classic)

Tomato, butter and onion (soothing, mellow, rich, moreish)

Tomato with spring vegetables (& olive oil) (deliciously fresh and Spring-like)

Of course that doesn't address clinging - seems to me there's a lot of water in tomatoes, the more you cook off the thicker and the sauce gets, and that's my first consideration. Though not to excess - those Hazan recipes run from a 25-minute simmer through a 45-minute one, IIRC.

Edited January 11, 2010 by Blether (log)

[nickrey]

Actually, I just made that theory up out of thin air. But it seems to me if you tried the same thing - reducing a can of plain tomatoes down and tossing pasta in it - without the oil, the tomatoes wouldn't achieve the right consistency. Would they?

I make sauce of a very good consistency that definitely sticks to pasta without adding the extra oil (it normally has a bit of olive oil from making the soffrito but nowhere near the amounts mentioned above).

I really think you are not thickening the sauce enough and it is too watery. Of course, oil and liquid can be used to make an emulsion so if you have marginally too much liquid you could correct it by liaising with butter or olive oil.

Please also note that it is pasta with sauce, not sauce with pasta. You do not need much sauce to have it in traditional Italian style. One of our fellow eGulleters, Samuel Lloyd Kinsey (slkinsey), prefers to see pasta sauce as a condiment to the pasta. This may change your way of thinking about it.

There is a huge discussion of pasta at this link. You can't really discuss the sauce without understanding the element that you are sticking the sauce to.

Edited January 11, 2010 by nickrey (log)

[howsmatt]

The butter will emulsify and mix in with the sauce to help it stick. I do not believe oil would work in the same way and we never used it except for flavour at the end when necessary. That is also why it is important to turn off the heat so you just get the better to melt- and being more solid as it cools, helps to stick it to the pasta.