Marinara Sauce

I have lots and lots of recipes for marinara sauce, meat sauce, alfredo sauce, on and on. I feel like I have sauce recipes coming out of ears sometimes I swear. So, for some reason I decided to NOT use one those many, many recipes and try out something new. I wanted something not exactly homemade, since that takes all day, but I didn't want the out of the jar stuff either. So on the internet I went a looking. I found one on www.allrecipes.com that is a good place to go, right?? So I was taking a look at all the different marinara sauces and finally decided on one. It seemed pretty easy and it was ready within 30 minutes and there were lots and lots of great comments and reviews, so why not. Here is the recipe:

Marinara Sauce

Ingredients:

2 (14.5 oz) cans stewed tomatoes

1 (6 oz) can tomato paste

4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1 clove garlic, minced

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

6 tablespoons olive oil

1/3 cup finely diced onion

1/2 cup white wine

Directions:

In a food processor, place stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, chopped parsley, minced garlic, oregano, salt and pepper. Blend until smooth.

In a large skillet, over medium heat, saute the finely chopped onion in olive oil for 2 minutes. Add the blended tomato sauce and white wine. 

Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In true Heather style, I immediately started messing with the ingredients. First of all, I didn't have any canned stewed tomatoes, but I did have some whole tomatoes (in a can), so I used that, I also didn't finely dice the onions. I like mine a little chunkier. I did dice them, just not finely. Other than that, I did EXACTLY what it said to do. Once it was done I tasted it. It was NOT what everyone was saying it was. It tasted like watered  down tomato sauce. I was very disappointed. I threw caution to the wind at that point and decided that it was time to start messing around with the recipe. First, I added about 3 more cloves of garlic, we are big garlic lovers here, and I used about 4 tablespoons of Italian Seasoning (my personal favorite is made by McCormick and it's in a grinder) and extra pepper and a little more salt. I let it simmer for about 45 more minutes with a lid and stirred every so often. It was the best marinara sauce I have had. So, I have decided that I should add this one to my ever growing recipe collection, i.e my cookbook, with the changes I have made. 

I wanted to also add to this, that you don't have to use the white wine if you don't want to. You can use chicken stock instead. It doesn't really change the flavor sooooo much, maybe a little, but if you aren't a fan of wine, this is a good substitution. 

Before I met my husband I wasn't much of a wine drinker at all. In fact, I hadn't even had wine before I met him. Now, not that I drink it all the time now but I do have it around. Mainly just in case we have company or we have decided to have a really nice dinner at home. One of my favorite things to is have a nice glass of wine out on my back porch while my husband is grilling. I also enjoy just sitting out there with him and the beautiful night sky. The night sky is so open, so simple. There isn't anything going on, nice and quiet. So much different than normal day to day routine. It's so big and it makes you feel so small, yet comforted at the same time. Maybe that's just me, but as we sit outside either having dinner or just chatting, I like a nice glass of wine to go with it, let us unwind from the day or the week. 

Anyway, totally off subject.

If you don't have wine in your house for whatever reason, you can use the chicken stock and it will be just as lovely. No need to go buy a bottle of wine just so you can have this dish. 

My family ate it all up without any complaints and even said that the sauce was one of the best they had had and wanted me to make sure to put this into our rounds. I also made homemade garlic bread a little different than I had in the past as well, and that was out of need and not trying something different. That's a different post for a different day I think.