Project 1: Quick Homemade Marinara

If you’re like me, you may have stocked up on a couple too many canned goods during a pandemic-fueled grocery shopping frenzy. I am now drowning in boxes of chick pea/lentil pasta and wondering how the pasta-loving Italian gene got such a hold over my brain in my weak moment at Giant. The canned food stock up combined with the desire for some serious comfort food led me to play around with making homemade marinara. Hopefully this is a solid and easy-ish first project that you can do with things you already have at home.

Quick project summary: To make the marinara, I researched a few different recipes and then ultimately decided to play around a bit with combining them. Here’s what I did:

-Put about 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a large pan

-Added half a white onion and cooked it for a couple minutes on its own followed by added 4 cloves of garlic

-After the onion and garlic cooked together, I added in basil, salt and pepper (you could also use italian seasoning instead of just basil but I found the basil was all I needed). I also added 1-2 tablespoons of butter at this point and stirred the butter, garlic, onion and spice mixture together until the butter melted.

-I then added 2 14oz cans of unsalted diced tomatoes and 1 small can of tomato paste as well as 10 ounces of water. I let this simmer for 30 minutes and stirred occasionally.

-After this cooled down, I used an immersion blender to get the sauce to the consistency I wanted.

We ate this as pictured above over spaghetti squash with chorizo, asparagus, smashed potatoes, and challah.

Why I love this project: I was so happy to be able to make a marinara sauce that didn’t take 10 hours but still tasted delicious. I also loved that we finally knew what was in our tomato sauce and that it was pretty basic/minimal ingredients. Plus, this made a good amount of sauce which we repurposed for multiple different meals including over chick pea pasta, chicken parm, and to make a “tomato sauce sandwich” which was a childhood favorite of mine (it really is just tomato sauce between two slices of bread – sounds lame but 11/10).

I loved this project because it reminded me of my great Aunt Susie (more on her later but in short she was a serious BAMF). Sometimes when the world seems upended, either personally or more broadly *insert pandemic here*, a little reminder of simpler times or the fact that I can create something both functional and fun to make is just the boost I need.

What I would do differently: I might recommend using crushed tomatoes instead of diced. I think you could skip the immersion blender that way and potentially get more consistency across the sauce.

Things I also enjoyed while doing this project:

-Listening to the Sara Bareilles “King of Anything” album – solid good cooking music

-Drinking Stephen Miller’s Cabernet – reasonably priced and delicious

-Burning a new candle from target called “Succulent Garden”