It's Saturday evening and the kids are hungry. Now that they're teenagers they are hungry all the time xD
The thing is on a Saturday in summer I'd expect them to be out doing things 'n' stuff. So I was thinking of just making myself a salad and calling it good. But as it got closer to dinner I noticed they were still here and they were starting to come out of their rooms and circle...
I have not made homemade marinara in a bit and I had all the stuff I needed so I decided pasta, Italian sausage, and some sauce would be on the menu tonight.
This is a basic sauce, as you can see.
Onion, garlic, salt, pepper, sugar, fresh oregano and a can of the finest tomatoes from Italy. #authentic
First we do some chop chop..
Now, just behind me on the stove, as I chopped, the pan was heating up. Once hot I hit it with some olive oil, then the onions. Cook the onions until they are translucent but not brown. For some applications you want to brown onions, not for marinara.
Once they were done I added the garlic and some fresh ground pepper. I like to cook the pepper in the oil to open up that peppery flavor.
After a minute I dumped the can of tomatoes in and added the salt, sugar, and oregano.
A quick note about the sugar. Add. Very. Little. The sugar is not to make it sweet but to cut the acidity in the tomatoes and balance the flavors in your sauce.
Now let's give it a stir, turn the heat down a bit and cover it up while I get the sausages going.
These happen to be Johnsonville Italian sausages that are raw. I prefer those to the cooked ones.
After a few minutes the sausages were looking real nice and I didn't want to lose all that flavor (fat) in the pan, so I dumped the sauce over the sausages and covered that for a few minutes.
Well, we're all done with dinner and it was pretty good, if you ask me ;)
Now time to clean this mess up :(
)