You Say Tomato, I Say 'Meh'

Yes, I know it's unusual. Yes, I know some would consider it anti-American. But it's true.

I don't like tomato sauce.

Sure, I've had good tomato sauces from time to time. But if a sauce is red and being spooned over spaghetti, the chances are pretty good that I won't care for it.

Maybe it's not quite accurate to say that I don't like it. It's more that I find it boring. Uninteresting. It just doesn't invite me to take a second bite.

This really hasn't been much of a problem. I just don't order pasta in restaurants. (I don't care for average alfredo sauces either.)

But a few weeks ago, I made eggplant lasagna for a group of friends. People liked it, but there were a number of things that disappointed me.

Such as the sauce. It was okay. But, it was, to my mind, completely unremarkable.

And so, I've begun a quest to develop a tomato sauce that I can have confidence in. A sauce with depth, with complexity, with interesting-ness. ("Mommy, 'interesting-ness' isn't a word!" "No, darling, it isn't, and I never want to hear you say it!")

In my quest, though, I didn't want to get away from pantry ingredients. I didn't want to include a lot of fresh herbs that would make the sauce too expensive to make frequently.

I decided that the way to go might lie in glutamates, the ingredients that add that "umami" thing the foodies like to talk about.  So, my first stab at this, made last weekend, included tomato paste, which is typical, and Thai fish sauce and sesame oil. ("Mommy, he added fish sauce! EWWWW!" "Don't worry, sweetie, I won't make you try it.")

The result was okay on pasta that night. A couple of days later, it was pretty good on my pizza. And last night, the last of it was FABULOUS with mozerella over spaghetti.

So, I think I'm on the right track. In the next batch I make, I'll swap out the fish sauce for the more Italian anchovy paste. I'm also harboring dark thoughts involving dried mushrooms AND their soaking liquid. We'll see.

It's a work in progress. When I've got something like a recipe, I'll share it here.