Sunday, January 17, 2010

Is it Parmesan or Parmigiana?

Parmigiana seems more authentic, so I'll go with that. :) Tonight, I made an Italian meal for a group of hungry boys (Alex, his buddy Grant, and Joey). I started by looking for an easy sauce recipe and fortuitously, one had been posted on one of my favorite cooking blogs, Smitten Kitchen, today! Now, I usually use premade sauce b/c it easier and, compared to my previous attempts, better, but this sauce has changed my mind. It's incredibly easy and amazingly tasty. The secret is butter (of course!). Here's the recipe:

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions
Adapted from Marcela Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking

Serves 4 as a main course; makes enough sauce to lightly coat most of a pound of spaghetti

28 ounces whole peeled tomatoes from a can (San Marzano, if you can find them)*
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Bring the sauce to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free of the tomatoes. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat, discard the onion, add salt to taste (you might find, as I did, that your tomatoes came salted and that you didn’t need to add more) and keep warm while you prepare your pasta.

I actually made a double batch to have enough to serve over pasta as well as in the eggplant and chicken parmigiana that I prepared. I dredged and fried some chicken cutlets and a sliced eggplant (pre-salted) and layered each with the sauce and some parmesan and mozzarella cheeses. I baked in the 350F oven for ~30 minutes until the cheese was melted and bubbly. While the parmigiana was baking, I made some pasta as a side and also a green salad. Everyone enjoyed the feast and we ended the night with a MarioKart tournament (in which I came in last every time)!

1 comment:

  1. This looks amazing, and I'm also terrible at MarioKart. Sebastian beats me every time, and even offers me advice while he's racing. :)

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