Homemade quick tomato sauce (on meatball spaghetti)

I remember coming up with various defenses against making my own tomato sauce for pasta.  Let me eat my words and feast on this homemade quick tomato sauce too!

I must have been blind all this while!  I was going on and on about not having quality fresh tomatoes to make a sauce from scratch, and how I would refuse to splurge on gourmet tomatoes from gourmet supermarkets in a previous post.  The recipe for a homemade tomato sauce that's quick and not requiring even the skin of a gourmet tomato had been silently appealing for my attention from the corner of my book shelf.  It was on Page 32 of a particular book I bought that offered 100 ways to make pasta. 

This is the picture of quick pasta sauce from my pasta recipe book.
And the canned tomatoes & tomato puree.

Having seen enough of how canned tomatoes, be it chopped or whole, had been put to good use in a stew or sauce of some sort, I guess I was ready to abandon the purist idea that tomato sauce for pasta must be made with fresh tomatoes.  I shopped for canned tomatoes and tomato puree yesterday.  I thought it would be easier than hunting for fresh gourmet tomatoes.  It was definitely not.  

The recipe says "400g can chopped tomatoes".  But in the first supermarket I went to, I found canned but diced tomatoes.  Maybe "diced" and "chopped" would be different.  Maybe the next supermarket would have canned chopped tomatoes.  So off I went to the next location.  It was worse than the first.  There wasn't any canned tomatoes in sight!

Fret not!  There is a third location, the last one near home and definitely would offer something not costing a bomb.  It was my "get the food supply for the whole week" day yesterday.  So I was running from wet market to supermarkets in two locations up in the central-north and northeastern part of Singapore; just for that can of chopped tomatoes.  ^_^  I still maintain the unwillingness to splurge on tomatoes, fresh or processed.

At the last pit-stop, I dashed straight for the canned food section and stared at the shelves in disbelief.  No canned tomatoes.  After spending 30 seconds cursing under my breath and another 30 seconds feeling upset and stupid about the rush to satisfy my curiosity in homemade tomato sauce, I decided to walk over to the bottled pasta sauce corner to get my trusty Leggo's Napoletana sauce.  I felt worse.  The Napoletana sauce is out of stock!  How about Prego?  Didn't have the flavor I liked.  *Sigh*  Yes, I could give up and make something else for dinner.  But the kids wanted pasta, and more importantly, I wanted to try making my own sauce.  

Turned on my heels to leave the place and there they were, just right behind me, rows of canned diced tomatoes and tomato puree loomed into my sight! It was placed together with bottles of jams and spreads for bread.  Who in the first place would group canned tomatoes and tomato puree with jams and spreads?!  Anyway, I was simply too overjoyed to question too much about the supermarket's logic or philosophy in their product display.  And it is diced tomato instead of chopped tomato.  At that point, I really could not be too bothered about the nuance anymore.  Diced or chopped, it is tomato processed into small pieces and stored in a metal can which you need to open with a can opener.  Period.


Those are the cans of tomato puree and diced tomato I bought in the picture above.  Just to illustrate how happy I was, I took another picture from another angle. 

The two cans are sitting on Page 32, the recipe to my homemade quick tomato sauce.  I don't think it is so visible in this picture, but if you look at the first picture, you can see that the sauce is really thick, almost dry looking.  Mine on the other hand looked like this.

I wanted the sauce to be slightly more watery, so that every strand of spaghetti is awash with sauce.  Like this...

I had to agree that it is really a quick tomato sauce.  In fact, it was so quick that I managed to shape and pan-fry those meatballs, put together ingredients for the sauce and simmer it, getting the whole pasta sauce ready in 45 minutes flat, including washing up and mopping the floor ^_^.  Well, I had to be quick as I only had 1.5 hours left before rushing off to pick my girl up from her CCA.

The verdict?  
The Tiny Man was first in line to taste it.  He had came sauntering into the kitchen claiming that something smells good, like pasta sauce.  I gave him one meatball covered with many mushrooms and tomato sauce to try.  And he came back asking for seconds ^_^ (So happy!)
The girl protested at the mushrooms, as usual, gingerly picking these out and dumping them into her brother's bowl, as usual.  But she said it was good.  She had a second helping, of which, she took only a couple of mouthfuls.  This is quite confusing.  Did she really like the sauce?  Was it really that good?  But I think I have faith in my end product.  She must have been quite filled up from the first helping, which was quite big for her usual appetite.  
And finally, the chief food taster.  It is a little sour.  Okay, I can rectify that.  Add a little more sugar to mellow out the tang.  But what came next sort of took me off guard.  "It doesn't taste like homemade", that was what the Hubby offered.  Huh?  After clarification, I knew what he meant.  It tasted as good as those commercial ones that I always use.  Phew!  But on hindsight, how does homemade tomato sauce taste like anyway?

Homemade quick tomato sauce
(adapted from "100 great recipes: Pasta", Jacqueline Bellefontaine, Silverdale Books, 2005)


Ingredients (makes enough for 4)
2 tbsp olive oil (I didn't have any, so used peanut oil, purist don't scream)
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
400g can chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp dried oregano
salt and freshly ground black pepper (I used my usual white pepper instead)


Method
1. Heat the oil in a saucepan and saute onion for 3-4 minutes until softened.
2. Stir in the garlic and cook for 1 minute.
3. Add the tomatoes, tomato puree and oregano and bring to the boil.  I deviate a little for this step and the rest of the steps that follow are what I did.  
Before adding canned tomatoes, puree and oregano, I added mushrooms and saute for a further 2 minutes.  Then dunk the whole can of tomatoes into the saucepan, swirl the can holding the chopped tomatoes with hot water, and fill it up to half a can.  Empty the water into the saucepan.  Bring to boil.  Once it starts to boil, add tomato puree.  
4. Let the mixture boil simmer for about 5 minutes.
5. Add oregano and continue simmering for another 5 minutes.  
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.  If the sauce is too sour, add sugar to mellow out the acidity.  
7. Let the mixture simmer for another 3-5 minutes and that's about it.  


One last shot to savor.  Yummy!