That's not from scratch...*this* is from scratch.

[sir pball]

I hope y'all read that in a Crocodile Dundee voice

Anyway, the fiancée's daddy has a rather large garden and puts up loads of veggies every year; she bought him some specially imported San Marzano seeds in the spring and he apparently wound up with so many he sent us a half-dozen quarts with more to follow. Of course sauce is the first and best thing to do with canned tomatoes; I figured since they were really from "scratch" I might as well stick with that and make a meal from as close to "scratch" as I could. It's not the most creative thing I've ever done by far, but it's one of the more delicious.

Basic sauce

2 quarts canned tomatoes
1/2 carrot
1 medium white onion
6 cloves garlic
2 large sprigs basil
olive oil
salt, black pepper

Finely mince garlic, carrots, and onion (I just process in a Cusinart until small, but not puréed). Melt over a very low flame in olive oil along with the basil stems - you want no color whatsoever, but rather the aromatics to dissolve into a golden, redolent paste. Add tomatoes with liquid, simmer over very low heat until reduced by 1/3...it's going to take several hours. Add basil leaves and cook just a few more minutes, season to taste. Refrigerate overnight or better yet two days.

Sausage

2 pounds pork shoulder, diced 1/2" (no skin of course, but definitely keep the fat and chewy bits), placed in the freezer for a half hour or until firm but not hard
2 t salt
2 t black pepper, coarse
2 T minced parsley
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 T minced onion
1 T minced basil
2 t paprika
1/2 t 50:50 mix of powdered fennel and anise seeds
1/4 t brown sugar
1 T red wine vinegar
A pinch of minced oregano

Toss everything but the paprika and vinegar in a large bowl; process through meat grinder with medium die. Mix in the paprika and vinegar afterwards; I grind everything else to get a good initial mixing, then do the paprika after so I can use the color as a clue to thorough mixing. Refrigerate overnight.

Ricotta

1 gallon whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 T salt

Mix milk, cream and salt. Bring to a bare simmer, remove from heat, and stir in lemon juice. Let sit for 20 minutes or until thoroughly curdled; gently pour through 3-4 layers of cheesecloth in a strainer and let drain for 2 or 3 days. It should be relatively firm and dry, more so than "normal" ricotta.

Gnocchi di ricotta con salsicce e finocchio

1 batch Sauce
1 pound Sausage
1 batch drained Ricotta (approx. 1.5 pounds)
2 eggs
AP flour (at least 1.5 cups)
Nutmeg
1 bulb fennel
Pernod
Red pepper flakes
olive oil
Salt, pepper
Grana Padano

Brown sausage. Finely chop fennel. Sweat gently in a bit of olive oil, then half-cover with water and a splash of Pernod. Cook until tender, adding liquid as needed but making sure to finish dry, with no extra juice. Add sausage and sauce, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix the ricotta and eggs. Add salt, pepper, and nutmeg (I did it to taste, the bit of raw egg doesn't worry me - rough amounts would be 1.5t salt, a half-t of pepper, and a couple of grates of nutmeg). Mix in just enough flour to make the dough not sticky, it's going to be very soft. Roll into 1/2" logs and cut into 1" pieces or make quenelles (football-shaped dumplings using two teaspoons), store them on parchment paper dusted with flour while you shape the batch. Drop carefully into barely simmering water, stirring gently, strain out when they float.

Bring the fennel-sausage sauce to a simmer and add gnocchi, tossing gently to coat and warm through. Portion and garnish with freshly grated Grana Padano.

We had it with a Barbera d'Alba (Vietti '08 and yes I cheated and called a sommelier) but it would work well with a Sangiovese or in a pinch a Chianti, but don't go too heavy (Barolo, Amarone) or the gnocchi will get overwhelmed. All that and a fresh baguette and arugula salad with vinegar, oil and a little shaved Asiago made one hell of a meal. Not nearly as difficult as it sounds, too...the only real requirement is planning days ahead!

[Major Nikon]

1. I thought ricotta is made from whey

This recipe looks more like farmers cheese or cream cheese. Still sounds good regardless. I haven't made homemade sausage in a long time. I love San Marzano tomatoes and always keep them on hand in the pantry.

[sir pball]

2. Originally, but not always anymore

It was originally a way of using the leftover whey, but these days virtually everything you'll find in stores, even very good artisan stuff, is at least partially if not entirely milk. It's both a yield and quality thing - it's got the same smoothness and sweeter taste, just richer. Less healthy, too. It's not really like farmer's cheese, though; that's definitely drier and grainier (its curd is mainly casein coagulated by rennet, not albumin and globulin coagulated by heat and acid).

[Major Nikon]

3. I think I'll try it your way

I've made other simple cheeses in a similar fashion using rennet. I'm no cheesemaker by any stretch of the imagination, but I can do the simple ones.

[sir pball]

4. It's just about the easiest there is.

It's literally as simple as boiling water. And it's much better than anything in the store...cheaper, too - I pay 5.99/lb for the excellent Fairway house brand, I get half again as much for about a dollar less. You can omit the cream to save even more it's almost as good without and probably easier on the arteries.

[Auggie]

5. That sounds fantastic!

I've grown Romas but find the work required to turn them into sauce too labor intensive for the yield. I've yet to tackle pasta or gnocchi, but they're on the list.

[sir pball]

7. Gnocchi's a good start.

It's pretty easy to physically make (as opposed to anything rolled or extruded) plus the dough is completely forgiving - if you don't add enough flour or get the moisture content a little off, it still comes out reasonably well. Ditto the ricotta for cheesemaking.

[eridani]

6. If you were REALLY serious about from scratch, you should check this DU2 thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=236x35143

Gormy Cuss
7.. Go for broke.
Extract your own salt from some sea water. Grow a pepper tree and the requisite herb plants. Finally, forge a nice lasagna pan. For the sake of simplicity, it's best to make the tomato sauce plain. It takes a while to raise steers or pigs.

jgraz
9. EXTRACT the salt?????
Dude, get some sodium and chlorine and make it yourself. You just can't beat homemade salt.

jgraz
11. Once we get fusion down, I plan on cooking up my own elements
All I'll need in the fridge is a big bag of hydrogen -- organic, free-range, fair-trade hydrogen, of course.

eridani

18. Or make lasagna a millionth of a second after the Big Bang
You'd be limited to quark-gluon plasma and your own imagination, which would be seriously challenging.

But hey, if ya wanna be a wuss and wait another 300 seconds or so, you can have your mundane old hydrogen. Was it Einstein who said that the two most common substances in the universe were hydrogen and stupidity? You'd probably want to leave the stupidity out.

[sir pball]

8. Actually I WAS wistfully wishing I had been this motivated when I was growing up

We had a pigpen alongside the full garden when I was a kid in NW CT; pretty much the only things I wouldn't have been able to get from the backyard at that point would have been the flour and milk, and we bartered hay from our fields for milk from a neighboring farmer.

But hey, maybe I can put my chem degree to some use again...now if I just had access to a breeder reactor (you don't need fusion to transmute elements, just lots of neutrons!)