When Simple Becomes Outrageous

One of our guests posted a review on our soul food cooking, saying that if you want something special, this was the go-to place to eat. But if you wanted just the more basic dishes, not really worth the effort. I sortof agree. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to eat with us and just order the tried and true off the kids’ menu. You want schnitzel or spaghetti and meatballs? There are better, cheaper options out there.

However. And this is a big but.

I recently tried out Marcella Hazan’s recipe for tomato sauce The idea was to find a wow spaghetti sauce to go with what I think are some pretty damn good meatballs. What does a Jewish boy from Savannah, Georgia know about Italian cooking. Nada. I’ve always just grabbed a handful of usual, aging suspects from the fridge (carrots, onions, peppers, celery, you name it) and throw a sauce together. So I went to the source for Italian cuisine. This dish fucking blew me away.

It’s ridiculously simple. Four ingredients: Peeled tomatoes (you can even use the canned ones), butter, salt, and one onion cut into halves. That’s it. Let it cook over a simmer until you get a tomato reduction sauce. She says 45 minutes. My slow cook was more like 2 + hours. But so what A kilo of fresh tomatoes leaves you with about 0.5 liters of the richest tomato sauce I’ve ever tasted.

Of course who knows how this sauce will be received by my clients? And who knows if I can even make this dish work financially. It really is a gourmet spaghetti, meatballs, and tomato sauce, not the standard shit we have unfortunately become far too accustomed to as part our down-it-fast culture. And that’s really a shame. Our kids deserve to eat better than they do. So do we, come to think of it. Simple.