Confession

I like to cook marinara sauce. It's pretty easy, you can control the seasoning, and if you use high-quality canned tomatoes it's almost always better than what you could buy in a jar. Well, so I used to think, until I discovered this stuff. Very simple, very bright-tasting and tomato-y, well seasoned but letting the tomatoes shine, not too sweet, not chunky, but not pureed either. You can augment with more veggies, mushrooms, or meat. You can also add it to a simple soup made from leftovers. During tomato season, I plan to continue buying bargain "sort-outs" from the farmers' market and making sauce from scratch. Off season... this stuff.

Tomatoes

The NY Times / Wirecutter rates this the best canned tomato, and, amazingly, our local independent grocer had a number of cans in stock at a reasonable price just the other day. A good tomato deserves to be made into the best sauce, which is of course Marcella Hazan's. If you live near Palo Alto, do visit our friends at The Market. Mangia!

Marcella's tomato sauce

This is the best and simplest recipe in the world. Period. Do not skimp on the quality of the canned tomatoes, or the butter (quantity or quality). Do not add anything, except possibly a sprinkling of reggiano after serving. Assuming you serve it with pasta, keep the ratio of sauce to pasta very high. It will make you very happy.

Sort-outs

That's farmers' market-speak for mushy or broken tomatoes (etc.) sold at a steep discount. Today's were 75 cents a pound, just fine to eat sliced today. Mine are suffering a different fate...