tomato sauce by marcella hazan

Marcella Hazan’s classic 4-ingredient tomato sauce is apparently world renowned but I only came across it by chance on Twitter when a pal there mentioned he was going to try making it for the first time. So I did too! And yes, it is simplicity itself, and yes, it’s lovely and rich and so flavourful. The original recipe I found online called for whole tinned tomatoes, but for sauces I prefer using the chopped ones (so I did). And I started off with a teaspoon of salt, which was enough for me, but you can always add more later. It also says to cook the sauce for 45 minutes, but I think an hour gives you a bit more texture. In fact, I fell asleep while it was cooking (low and slow) and the onions ended up falling apart, making them difficult to fish out. I think I got maybe 3/4 of it out, but other friends told me they sometimes just blitz the onion in at the end. Really this is so easy it almost makes itself. Just don’t fall asleep!

Ingredients and instructions below…
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albóndigas (meatballs) with 2 sauces

albondigas (1)
I started off with an urge to make some good old fashioned meatballs, but couldn’t decide on a sauce. Eventually I went with a traditional Spanish tomato sauce but then – oops – ended up making way to many meatballs for the amount of sauce I had. So I had to come up with a second sauce for the extra meatballs and decided to go with a sherry sauce. The original tomato sauce recipe I had called for pancetta, but I chose to use up some jamón and chorizo threads I had in the fridge instead and the result was very tasty. Then for the sherry sauce I used bacon bits. Just to say that the pancetta can be switched for something similar.

My first batch made about 30 meatballs (which is why I needed another sauce). I’ve halved the recipe to make 15 meatballs with one of the sauces, or you can double it and make both sauces. Frankly, it takes almost as much effort to make 30 meatballs as 15, and they freeze well, so I’d always opt for going with the larger batch.

Ingredients and instructions below…
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