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+#+TITLE: Tomato Sauce
+#+OPTIONS: toc:nil num:nil
+#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel="stylesheet" href="../main.css">
+
+This is a general, all-purpose framework for turning some form of tomatoes into
+some form of sauce. You can use fresh tomatoes or canned (the latter are really
+quite surprisingly good sometimes), and include or omit garlic, basil, or other
+add-ins. The only real non-negotiable ingredients are tomatoes (duh), onion, and
+some kind of fat (I prefer butter).
+
+* Sauce
+
+1. *Prep*. If starting with canned tomatoes, skip this step. if starting with
+   whole tomatoes (which you should really only ever do if you grew them
+   yourself or got them fresh at a farmers market, grocery store tomatoes are
+   kinda sad), first, peel the tomatoes. The easiest way to do this is to score
+   them with an X pattern cut as shallow as possible while still breaking the
+   skin, trying to cover the whole surface area of the tomato, blanch them
+   briefly in boiling water, then dunk into an ice bath. After this, the skins
+   will slip right off.  After peeling, cut out the stem, core, and any green or
+   brown bits, and go to the next step
+
+2. *Base layer*. Couple of variables here, though a perfectly good (in fact, my
+   usual go-to) tomato sauce can also skip this entire step:
+   - If you want meat with your sauce (pancetta/guanciale/bacon for an
+     amatriciana, ground beef or pork for a bolognese) you'll start out by
+     sautéing that in some sort of fat (probably olive oil), less fat for meat
+     with a lot of fat already in it, to brown and render out fat from the meat
+   - If you want onion in the final sauce, you'll chop them finely and sauté
+     them with whatever fat you've got (either from the meat, or olive oil or
+     butter if you're not making a meat sauce). Remember to always add a *bit*
+     of salt when sautéing onion like this, not for flavor but to draw out the
+     moisture. If you just want onion flavor but not bits of onion in the final
+     sauce, it's added whole later (so ignore this bullet point).
+   - If you feel like it (sometimes I do, usually I don't) you can also mince
+     garlic here and sauté that in with everything else. Add a little after the
+     onion, as garlic cooks slower than onion unless you want something roastier
+     (usually you don't for tomato sauce)
+   - The traditional (so I'm told) thing to do with amatriciana, but also nice
+     with all variations, is to add in a little crushed red pepper with the
+     fat to flavor it slightly, but do this late so it doesn't burn
+   - If you have tomato paste on hand and feel like using it, it's also nice to
+     fry that in the oil for a little bit - usually I'd do that around the same
+     time as the garlic
+
+   If you're making tomato *paste* from your sauce, skip all of this - paste is
+   an ingredient, not a sauce on its own, so imo should be as neutral as
+   possible (eg just tomato).
+
+3. *Tomato layer*. Not a whole lot to do here, just add all of your tomatoes -
+   either your peeled and de-cored tomatoes from step 1 if you're using whole
+   tomatoes, or an entire can of whole, peeled san marzano tomatoes, including
+   the juice in the can - to a pot over medium-high heat. If you need more fat
+   or if you skipped step 2, this is where you'd add it - a classic and my
+   personal favorite is like 2/3rds to 3/4ths of a stick of butter, but you can
+   also go with olive oil. If you skipped the onion in step 2, add that here
+   too - usually that'd just be a fist-sized amount of onion or so peeled but
+   left with the stem on so you can fish it out from your final sauce later (and
+   snack on it!). Also salt here, again not to taste but primarily to draw out
+   moisture from the various ingredients.
+
+4. You can cook that for a wide variety of times, especially depending on how
+   hot you make your stove - there ends up being *lot* of liquid in there, so
+   you can go (in my experience) a reasonable amount hotter than you expect
+   without burning the sauce, though obviously your mileage may vary. The main
+   thing you're looking for is the whole chunks of tomato to break down, and the
+   whole sauce to get a texture that looks like it'll end up sticking to pasta
+   nicely. In all versions of this, stir pretty regularly with a wooden spoon,
+   and use the spoon to crush the big chunks of tomato occasionally.
+
+5. *Final layer*. Usually I don't do anything here - but if you feel
+   like it, usually right as you take stuff off the heat is where you'd add
+   basil, if you're using it. You can also add sugar to balance out too much
+   acidity from an especially acidic tomato here - I'm not going to tell anyone.
+   Also salt, but make sure to account for the extra salt you're gonna get from
+   the pasta water (see step 6)
+
+6. *Pasta*. You know how to cook pasta, I'm not going to tell you that. But,
+   like, salt your water until it tastes too salty, and remember to move the
+   pasta itself *directly* into the sauce pot from the pasta pot before it's
+   completely done cooking and without straining, bringing along some of the
+   pasta water (and a little extra for good measure) then finishing the pasta in
+   the sauce. You know, the thing you do for pasta. Remember the pasta water
+   will have salt in it, so adjust for that when salting the sauce overall (I
+   have made this mistake and ended up with too-salty pasta sauce).
+
+* Paste
+
+Start with the above recipe for tomato sauce, noting especially that (in my
+opinion) you should skip step 2 entirely. Keep cooking the sauce until it's
+*too* thick for pasta sauce (but don't burn it!), then spread it out across some
+sort of lined sheet pan (like a silpat, if you've got one) and bake in the oven
+at like 250-300 degrees for a *hell* of a long time - I've seen this take like
+10 hours, for an especially juicy batch of tomatoes, but obviously keep a close
+eye on it because it *definitely will burn* eventually. You're looking for the
+end result to be the texture of tomato paste, because that's what the recipe is
+for.  Especially if you're using garden-grown or otherwise fresh tomatoes,
+you'll notice quite a few seeds in the final product - don't worry too much
+about those, they've never bothered me. Once everything's done and cooled down,
+store in a jar in a fridge, topped with olive oil to seal things off and prevent
+oxidation. Use in all your future endeavors, including the tomato sauce recipe
+above itself. Tomato sauce is a beautiful oroborous.