Calabrese Sauce

I've always loved Italian food, and have always have loved meatballs. This recipe might be the best meatballs I've ever had. I was lucky enough to get a copy of this recipe after my parents brought this recipe back from some trip they went on where they took a cooking class. It changed how we make tomato sauce for Italian foods and completely blew my mind on meatballs.

I cooked this last night for DnA, Sandra, and Matt - rave reviews from all!

In this first post, I'll just be posting the sauce. The meatballs themselves will follow.


Ingredients:

1/2 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp chopped onion (I use more cause I love onion)
125 grams tomato paste (I just used the whole small can - 175 g)
dash red wine
2 - 24 oz cans/jars crushed tomatoes
salt and pepper

The recipe states that it is essential to use the finest tomatoes you can find in order to have the best tasting sauce. Makes sense, right? Last night I was using the Muir Glen organic Fire Roasted crushed tomatoes. I like to have lots of extra sauce, so I used 3 - 28oz cans of tomato, 2 of which were the fire roasted, 1 of the regular pureed tomato.

Directions:

The order in which you add ingredients is very important.

Saute the onion in the oil so that they are not under or overcooked. The recipe states that this should take about 9 minutes, I chopped my onion rather fine so it was more like 5-6 minutes.


Add the tomato paste and wine. I did this and mixed them a bit to try and incorporate the oil into the paste. I'm not sure this is necessary, but it made sense to me in the moment.



Next, quickly pour in the crushed tomatoes. (Note: add 2 cups of water if the tomatoes are very thick - I added at least 2 cups if not 3) Add the salt and pepper. Let simmer for at least 1 1/2 hours. When this sauce is ready, the olive oil will rise to the top.

If you are also making the Calabrese Meatballs, you add the meatballs to cook in the sauce after the sauce is finished and the oil has risen to the top.