1 April 2008
Salsa
not the dance, but the food variant. (for those who hand’t figured it out yet: it means sauce). What follows is the most basic of tomato sauces, but hell, do I like it. It goes perfectly together with any form of spaghetti or ziti (penne as we call it here in .be) and can be tweaked to personal taste by adding various things like shrimps, tunafish, carrots, peppers, … .
It all starts out with some olive oil (a few spoons, even though I never measured it), an onion, 3-4 fresh tomatoes and a clove of garlic. Finishing off with basil (preferably fresh leaves), pepper and a touch of sugar to sweeten the rather sharp tomato taste (optional).
The preparation is extremely easy (as in: even I can do it without screwing up).
Start by heating the olive oil in a saucepot. Chop the onion really fine, peel the garlic and crush it*. Put the onion and garlic together in the hot olive oil. Give it a minute so that the onion starts looking a bit shiny to the gold/brown side (stirr occasionally so that all of the onion is covered by the oil).
Cut the tomato in 4 parts (remove the green bit on top first, some people also like it peeled beforehand).
Once the onions have this sort of shiny gold look, put in the tomato chunks. Stirr frequently. After a few minutes your tomatos will become softer, push them (preferably with a wooden spoon) against the side of your pot so they fall apart in smaller parts without destroying them completely. You want them to be a tiny bit chunky in the end result.
Leave this on the fire for about 15 minutes. You’ll notice that most of the water from the tomatos is vaporating and you’ll get something that resembles a thick substance. At this point remove the garlic and bring to taste with (my preferences) a bit of cayenne pepper, a couple of fresh basil leaves (torn into not so small pieces). Make sure the pepper and basil are nicely stirred in the sauce so the taste is equally spread.
Time the cooking of your pasta so that is done pretty much at the same time of the sauce. For cooking pasta, I generally put a bit of olive oil and some oregano in the water. Cook your pasta to your liking and drain the water once you’re done.
Get your sauce from the fire while sauce & pot are still hot. Immediately stirr your pasta through the sauce (preferably in the sauce pot). This will prevent the pasta from sticking together, and will allow it to suck up some of the taste of the sauce. Serve directly from the pot on a (hot) plate. And most of all, eat with just a fork (and a spoon if you really have to) but don’t cut it. Cutting spaghetti is a sin!
Since this is such a basic tomato sauce, you can make a lot of variations and combine with not just pasta. I’m interested in hearing yours 
*Crushing garlic is done with the flat of a knife. Just put your knife flat on the garlic and push untill you hear the garlic cracking. The intent is to make a few cracks in the garlic so the taste can flow out, don’t break it.
In general, if you want a very low garlic taste, just put in the peeled clove. For a mild taste, peel&crush it. For a hard garlic taste, peel & slice it really fine and don’t remove it afterwards.