When I was in Italy last year, I fell in love with the Italian people and their food. My two favorite things about Italy is that people sing anytime, anywhere, just for the joy of singing AND there's no such thing as too much olive oil.
The latter of these (the no-such-thing-as-too-much-olive-oil hypothesis) got put to the test by a mistake I made in my latest recipe. Since it is finally becoming tomato season, I decided to make a big batch of "Long Cooked Tomato Sauce," one of the recipes from the Basics section of Vegetarian Suppers. The recipe calls for 4-5 pounds fresh tomatoes. I had about 7 pounds from the CSA and from some heirlooms at my local market. This meant I needed to make a one and a half batch. The recipe starts by asking you to put the whole, unpeeled tomatoes in a large Dutch oven, pressing down on a few of them to get the juices flowing, and then covering them and cooking over medium heat for about 20 minutes until they are broken apart. Then you put them through a food mill to get rid of the skins and seeds. I did all this.
The recipe then says to rinse the pan, return it to the heat and add the olive oil. Somehow I thought I was supposed to put the tomatoes back in the pan and add the olive oil, so that's what I did. Had I read the next sentence (or actually read the recipe all the way through before beginning - which I highly recommend, by the way) I would have understood that the olive oil was for frying the onions and celery. Then you add the tomatoes back into the pot.
Now, here's where the olive oil hypothesis comes into play. The recipe called for 1/2 cup of olive oil, but since I was making a 1.5 batch, I dumped 3/4 cup of olive oil into my tomato puree. That's actually a lot of olive oil. I read the next sentence and realized that not only was I supposed to use the olive oil for sauteing the veggies, but the recipe actually said 1/4 cup of olive oil, not 1/2 cup. Now I have chopped onions and grated zucchini standing by that needs to be sauteed and I have just dumped 3 times as much olive oil into my tomatoes as the recipe actually called for. What should I do?
Well, I decided to see if my supposition about olive oil was correct. I got out another pan and put a couple tablespoons of olive oil in it over medium heat and sauteed the 3/4 c. onions and 3/4 c. zucchini. (I was supposed to be using celery, by the way, but it is zucchini season so zucchinis seem to be finding their way into everything I make.) I seasoned these with salt and added them in with the tomatoes, along with a couple small bay leaves, a big thyme sprig, and a big basil sprig.
I also learned from this recipe, that if you add a whole carrot to your tomato-based sauces, it does the same thing that adding a teaspoon of sugar does - it cuts the acid. The recipe called for 1 whole peeled carrot, so I used 2 small whole peeled carrots. At about 5 o'clock in the evening, I left the whole thing to cook over low heat, wondering if the sauce would be oily and disgusting.
I had people coming over for the evening and I always love to cook to make the house smell good before people come over. Another thing I learned in this whole process is that I really don't like the smell of cooking tomatoes, so I would advise doing this on a day when no one is home.
The recipe says to cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has thickened as much as you wish. I had no idea how long this meant. A couple hours maybe? I wandered by every 20 minutes or so and gave it a stir. My guests arrived at 7:00 and we went out into the back yard. At around 10 p.m., I was chatting with a friend when I looked over at the stove and realized the sauce was still cooking, 5 hours after I had left it there. I leapt from my chair, with an exclamation, and rushed over to the stove. There in the pan was about half as much sauce as I had started with, and it was a deep, luscious red color. There wasn't any oil floating on top. I gave it a stir and stuck in my (clean) spoon for a taste. It was heavenly. Maybe the best tomato sauce I have every tasted.
So the olive oil hypothesis holds up. Yes!
Here is the original list of ingredients with the cost of each as close as I can guess. I will be using this sauce to make the Eggplant Gratin recipes (three variations) from the cookbook. I'm not a big eggplant fan, but I'll let you know how it turns out. You might try making it the way Deborah Madison suggests, though I dare you to try my new recipe!
Cost to Prepare:
4-5 pounds fresh tomatoes, rinsed - $10 ($2 per pound?)
1/4 cup olive oil - $1.00
1/2 c. diced onion - $.50
1/2 c. celery - $.25
1 whole peeled carrot - $.25
1 bay leaf, 1 thyme sprig, 1 basil sprig (these all grow in my garden, so I'm guessing) - $1.00
sea salt - negligible
TOTAL - $13 for a big batch of sauce
Things I'd do differently next time: Hmmmm.... Use celery?
This is awesome. I'm happy to know that the hypothesis holds up, even when using three times as much as was called for!
ReplyDeleteCARLA says:
ReplyDeleteThings you'd do differently? Add MORE oil, to REALLY test the theory! I wonder if the sky's the limit?!
BTW: The real words of that song were always "Lucy in the sky with olive oil", but the radio stations made them change it. They assumed it was kink. They'd never been to Italy. THEIR LOSS!!