Searching for the ultimate tomato pizza sauce.

[Gregorian]

Does anyone here have a red pizza sauce recipe they love? There was an obscure little pizza parlor in the San Francisco slurbs that I used to go to. This guy had a sauce that was absolutely perfect. Spicey, tangy, and perfect. But that was many beers ago. Memory has faded. I cannot for the life of me, duplicate that sauce.

Maybe you can even steer me in the direction by which ingredients to use. I've googled forever on this subject, and still don't have that perfect sauce. So far, I have abandoned making the sauce by scratch. I started over by just buying spaghetti sauce in the can, and adding stuff to it. And I'm still not happy. Garlic, shallots, tobasco, lemon juice, tomato paste. I'm even experimenting with canned tomatoes in balsamic vinegar. I might even go so far as to try msg, if all else fails.

I think the goal is to achieve what I call "tangy".

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

1. Mine is so basic I doubt

it will help. I like it, but there's nothing super special about it.

Maybe it will give you ideas, but I sorta doubt it.

All-Purpose Marinara Pizza Sauce

1 28-ounce can tomato puree
13/4 cups water
1 tablespoon dried parsley
2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram (optional)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons garlic powder, or 10 cloves fresh garlic, minced or pressed, and lightly sauteed in 1/4 cup of the olive oil, above
1/4 cup red wine vinegar or freshly squeezed lemon juice, or a combination
11/2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
In a bowl, stir together tomato puree, water, parsley, basil, oregano, thyme, marjoram, pepper, olive oil, garlic powder or sauteed garlic, and red wine vinegar or lemon juice. Add salt, starting with 1/2 teaspoon, adding more to taste. Store in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

[Gregorian]

2. Ooooh!

That's a recipe after my own heart- ten cloves of garlic. I love it. That could be the ingredient I'm after.

Even if this isn't the final recipe, it sure looks like a good place to start.

Thanks a bunch! I'll get on it right away...

:)

[OldLeftieLawyer]

3. I got it for ya, I bet

It's the best marinara sauce recipe in the world, if I do say so myself. The problem is that it was the subject of an article I wrote for Newsday, and, since they own the article, I never kept a copy on this laptop. But, there's a rough draft on my computer at home, so I'll get someone to send it to me post-haste, and I'll get it up here.

The recipe's so off-the-wall, the copy editor from the paper called me the day before it went to press to make sure I was really right about the amount of the ingredients.

But, you have to know that the quality of your ingredients matters mightily. Forget the canned spaghetti sauce - that stuff's loaded with corn syrup (except for Paul Newman's, bless his heart, and probably some good organic brands I can't remember right now). The problem is, they're not very good.

You need a really good olive oil, for starters.

And really fresh onions and garlic. And the trick is to get yourself some good granulated garlic (Costco sells it in big containers for something life $5, I think), and the rest, as they say, is really very simple, as are most things that are great.

Simplicity ain't easy.

I promise - it'll be here within the hour.

[Gregorian]

4. Yikes. I'm thrilled.

It never ceases to surprise me the variety and quality of you folks here. Greet!, as John Cleese would say when acting like a Scottish film director.

I'm off for a bike ride through the mountains. Life can wait...

PS- yes, I have experienced the quality of ingredients issue. Speaking of which, if you ever get the chance, try Tillamook extra sharp cheddar. Or Bubbies pickles. There's two ingredients that cannot be beat.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

5. BUBBIE'S!!!!!!!!!!!!

The bread-and-butter pickles are worth dying for, and her sauerkraut atop a bagel dog - along with brown mustard, jalapenos, sweet onion chunks, and Vidalia relish - is one of my favorite breakfasts!!! Tilamook extra sharp cheddar is another favorite, and you are definitely someone who will so totally "get" this spaghetti sauce recipe.

Needless to say, the cheese you'll use on it should be a really good Parmesan (Reggiano, if possible) or a nice Locatelli (the kind I grew up with).

Anyway, here goes, and I hope you like it (it freezes wonderfully):


SAUCE

5 lbs. freally fresh yellow onions, chopped

as much garlic as you can chop without getting homicidal (a pound is about right)

celery, chopped - no leaves - as much as you want (lots)

carrots, chopped - ditto (lots)

olive oil (the best you can afford)

5 large cans of Italian plum tomatoes - Contadina is very good - any imported Italian brand is good, too

three handfuls of dried oregano

three handfuls of dried basil

three handfuls of dried parsley

crushed red pepper - two or three Tbs.

Red wine

Sugar

Bay leaves

Heat the olive oil slowly in a big heavy stockpot. Throw in the onions, celery and carrots, and stir well, coating everything with the oil. Stir continually until the vegetables begin to soften.

Add the garlic, stir for another five minutes.

Add the tomatoes, juice and all. Stir well.

Add the handfuls of dried oregano, basil and parsley. Throw in the red pepper flakes, but start small - maybe one Tb.

If you have any red wine left over from dinner last night, pour it in periodically, just to keep the sauce from getting too thick. If the wine has been open longer than 24 hours, do NOT use it in this sauce. DO NOT USE COOKING WINE. EVER. FOR ANYTHING.

Sugar - just like the red pepper - add about one Tb. See how that works. A little goes a long way.

(At this point, if you're not sure of the ultra-freshness of the garlic you're using, I'd throw in a half-cup of the aforementioned granulated garlic, just to be sure.)

Throw in a half dozen bay leaves. Stir everything really well, bring it to a simmer, lower heat, cover, and let it cook for 6 to 8 hours.

Before you go to bed, turn off the heat, leaving it covered.

When you get up in the morning, bring it back to a simmer, and let it simmer for another 4 hours.

Refrigerate overnight. Remove bay leaves. If you like a smoother sauce, run it through a food processor.

Don’t use too much cheese.

PS: I think riding a bike through the mountains qualifies as a most superior life.

[Gregorian]

10. Looks interesting.

It's a big recipe. And just as weird as I expected. Lots of onions. I'm really looking forward to this. I'll just have lots of marinara to look forward to. Or maybe cut it in half the recipe size.


I haven't tried the sauerkraut. I'll give that a try. Judging from their pickles...


Thanks for this wonderful recipe!


PS- Biking is my joy in life. In fact, I'm typing this between commercials of the Tour de France. I grew up riding the mountains of the San Francisco penninsula in the 60's and 70's. Now I'm on my mountain bike riding through logging trails. It doesn't get much better. I would absolutely love to live in Europe where biking is more respected. But that's another lengthy story.

[housewolf]

6. Tillamook Extra Sharp cheese

is an EXCELLENT cheese!

It's a wonderful flavor. Yummm...

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

7. Tillamook extra sharp

vintage white cheese! We live on the stuff.

Funny story, my mom & my dil were talking about my mac & cheese. I had told both of them how I make it, but I don't have a recipe per se. Anyhoo, they accused me of holding out on them ala Laura Petrie forgetting to tell Milly about the mustard in the dip. One day, son & DIL are over & I'm making mac & cheese & she's helping. I get out the cheese & she say's she'll grate it. She's looking at the package, tastes a bite & says "maybe that's why yours is so good, it's the cheese," I honestly never even thought about it. We've been eating that cheese for years.

best

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Since I don't know what your long lost San Franciso sauce was ......

Here's one I like. This is pretty much along the model of what you find in old Napoli (whence, from said city's environs, my grandparents emigrated). This is a small quantity recipe. Makes several pizzas (2 to 6, depending on the size).

1 can of San Marzano whole tomatoes. If you can't find the San Marzanos, get the very best canned whole plum tomatoes you can find.

Fresh basil, oregano, and parsley, chopped coarsely. Use about 1/4 cup (after chopping) of each .... but you can adjust this to taste.

Fresh chopped garlic. Use at least 6 cloves. A whole head won't kill anyone (except vampires or sitting vice presidents in the year 2005).

Salt and pepper to taste.

Crush the tomatoes by hand. You want chunks. Drain off all liquid and reserve. Add all the other ingredients. Judge the viscosity of the sauce and, if need be, add back a bit of the reserved juice. if you're using San Marzanos, drink the rest of the juice. :)

Allow this to macerate for a few hours, at least. Even better, let it go overnight in the refrigerator.

This recipe is not particularly 'tangy'. In fact, tangy is not a word that comes to mind. "Fresh' and 'clean' are better adjectives.

The key to a good pizza (or, as we call it where I'm from ..... 'apizza' ...... pronounced "ah-PEETZ'-{eh}) is to use a small amount of sauce. Sparingly. Lite. Scant.

I top a pizza this way:

Brush dough lightly with olive oil. Very lightly.
Sauce
Cheese (fresh mozzarella, avoiding that rubbery stuff in a plastic wrapper if at all possible) torn into smallish chunks - about 1/2" or so.
Other toppings (if you must).

As an alternative, omit the garlic from the sauce and add it to the olive oil you'll use to brush the pizza and add the garlic with the oil ... have at it .... the more garlic the merrier. This unmacerated garlic is less mellow and more 'tangy' (if you will) than adding it to the raw sauce earlier.

The thing about this is that it is very simple and uncooked. The San Marzanos are soooo sweet, they need no suger. And they taset like ... well ..... tomatoes.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

9. Long ago, in Narita Airport, outside Tokyo,

I stumbled into a pizza place. I ordered a slice.

I got a piece of something that might have been heavy rice paper, brushed with ketchup, topped with that very same mozzarella you mentioned.

I'm still seeing a therapist about that one..............

[Stinky The Clown]

12. You're not gunna b'lieve this ...... but one of the best pizzas I ever had

was in an Italian restaurant in Ginza. The proprieter was Napolitano and the whole crew was Italian. They had a gen-yoo-wine brick (as in small ceramic thingies) oven fired by some sort of coal (not anthricite as the great New York and New Haven pizzerias use, but kinda, sorta close). The crust was delightfully charred and light and puffy and the mozarella was bufala.

Of course, this little jewel cost a king's ransome .... but .... that's Ginza.

You mean you actually found something edible at Narita? The only place I found it was in the JAL lounge. The concourse was a wasteland .... but I really loved the 'toll booth' you have to feed to get to the departure gates.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

14. Oh, sure, the Ginza

Everything's great there, although I admit I never noticed any pizza places - I was too busy shopping.

Remember the phone booths with the perfume sprays? I loved those, even though my height meant I got sprayed around my waist. Still, it was such a genteel touch.

No, I've never found anything edible at Narita. Ever. I always make sure I'm carrying something with me. We once got caught there while Boris Yeltsin was landing, and we couldn't leave the damn arrival lounge for almost three hours. One grand old British gal had a five-pound bag of pistachios (?) and she kept us calm, bless her heart. Mrs. Johnson.

[Gregorian]

11. This is getting exciting.

Tomatoes. Mmmm.
At the risk of starting yet another culinary conflict, I tend to like my pizzas flooded with extra red sauce. Shame, some say. I even had this argument (discussion, actually) with my mom a few days ago. She was expounding on a pizza she had at Wolfgang's place in SF. Very little of any kind of sauce. I think it's the same old matter of ingredient quality. Great flavor may not require a lot to achieve big results.




:) As for the garlic, I think if we just keep this pResident on his bike, he'll finish himself off just fine. We'll have to reserve the garlic for the vampire vp.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. Yes, I think it is a matter of flavor intensities .....

If you think about the relative quantities in my recipe, for example, there's a pretty high percentage of flavor (the herbs and the garlic) to bulk (the tomatoes).

The Italians make sauce two basic ways ..... one as described above and one where they actually make **no** sauce. Each ingredient is simply placed, raw, on the pizza just before its baked.

By the way, even in Italy there's a huge debate about the tomatoes ..... canned vs fresh. Mind you, San Marzanos are grown just a few clicks south of Napoli and thet're available year round. Some people swear by the canned. Others say that fresh ones - some being ever so slightly sun dried to concentrate the flavor, and some just plain fresh - are the classic way. I tend to use both .... depending on what I want the pizza to be.

The absolute classic pizza, the Margherita, is made with fresh sliced ones and bufala mozarella made the same day the pir is to be cooked. They top it with whole fresh basil leaves. They use very little of any one ingredient.

But here's a little secret ..... pizza is now a world wide food. Your favorite is likely as not related to one that you had so long ago you don't remember, but that flavor imprinted in your brain (wherever we store pizza recipes in our brains) and influences what you like now. Just because I like them as described above is no reason you should.

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

15. I wonder if the sauce had anchovies in it?

There's a pizza place that was renowned for its sauce. A friend who had worked there opened his own pub. The owner really liked my friend & gave him the 'secret' recipe. I teased my friend over & over for the recipe. The only thing he would tell me was that it had anchovies in it. I sure couldn't taste them, but they must have added something.

best

[Gregorian]

16. I think experimentation is part of the discovery

I find it kind of weird that someone asked me if there were anchovies in any of the recipes I had gotten here.
The pizza place was called Huey's. It was a total hole in the wall. The guy was just finding a way to fund his sidecar racing habit. I even remember him making pizzas with a cast on his arm.
I'll add this to my list of things to try.
The best part of this whole thing is that I always have pizza.
The strangest things can make a recipe. Like pickles in scrambled eggs, with yoghurt on the side. I grew up eating that.
Thanks!

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

17. True, you'll always have pizza!

Pizza's like sex; even when it's bad it's still pretty good.

Not a sex joke AZDEM-don't delete me! I don't want to be the first deletion in cooking & baking! LOL

best

[cmf]

18. I add a dash of balsamic vinegar

To give my sauce extra tang. I soften garlic in olive oil, add tomatoes, oregano, salt and pepper and simmer until reduced and add vinegar and basil right before I put it on the dough. It comes out very, very good.