My delicious tomato sauce recipe
Argentinean Cuisine
Argentina has a strong influence of Italian cuisine; it is so much so that we do not separate Italian food from local food. Pasta and pizza are not considered foreign, at all.
In this lens I am going to give my personal tomato sauce recipe in two different variants: one completely vegetarian and the other Bologna style with grounded meat. It is one of the many ways I sneak in veggies in my kids´ diet. They love it!
Of course tomato sauce is not much alone. I´m going to show you some of the ways we ate it this month.
Vegetarian tomato sauce
For the vegetarian tomato sauce you will need:
Ingredients:
- 6 medium skinned tomatoes.
- 2 carrots.
- 2 small onions or one big.
- 2 claws of garlic.
- 1 bell pepper without seeds.
- a dash of olive oil.
-sea salt.
-oregano (or marjoram) and paprika.
Tomatoes
The other ingredients
You will need
- a pan.
- a wooden spoon.
- a blender.
- a small bowl.
- chopping block and knife.
Some cool options if you do not have them are:
Cooking instructions
- Peal and chop so and so all the ingredients.
- Add all ingredients except the tomatoes in a pan at medium heat.
- Cook until tender moving the contents with a wooden spoon so it doesn´t burn.
- Put the peeled tomatoes in a blender, add a lil bit of water and blend. When it is ready add the cooked vegetables and blend everything. You can also use a food processor for this, it is up to you.
- Take back the mix to the heat and cook at very low temperature for about 20 minutes. Add water if necessary while cooking and correct the seasoning.
- You are going to notice that there is a pink-ish foam on the surface. Take it out with the wooden spoon and put it in a small bowl. if you don´t do this, the sauce is bitter.
Take the foam out
How do we eat it?
I use this sauce for pasta and pizza. These are two of the ways we ate it this month:
Ravioli with tomato sauce.
Snack pizza with base of bread.
Ravioli with vegetarian tomato sauce
Snack pizza
Must have book about sauces
Sauce Bologna style
It is pretty much the same until the point of bringing the blend back to the pot. Before adding the veggies back to the pan, we will cook the ground beef in it (add a dash of olive oil to the bottom).
If you ground the meat yourself or have a butcher who does it in front of you, then you can add the sauce over the meat raw. If, on the other hand, you buy the meat at any supermarket, you will have to brown it with sea salt and spices until cooked, and discard all the oil and water it will release.
Once you add the veggie mix, cook again for about 20 to 30 minutes. This sauce will need more attention than the other depending on how much meat you use. As you see I did not add quantities, it will depend on what you want it for.
To make pasta or rice, one pound is a good amount, for empanadas, you will need two pounds of meat for these veggies (it gives about three dozens). It is not usual to make empanadas with sauce, it is my personal recipe.
Cook the veggies
Brown meat
Add sauce to meat and cook
Food grinders
If you can go to the butcher and ask him to grind the meat you want, you probably do not need to have a grinder at home, but if you buy supermarket food... then you need a grinder. Times are interesting, we need caution to protect our health.
How do we eat it?
In Angentina, this sauce is called "Bolognesa". It goes great with pasta, rice, as base of a potato pie, and may other forms.
This month we ate it two times, once with rice and once in empanadas. The rice preparation is pretty straight forward, the empanada deserves a whole lens for itself.
Empanadas are a typical food from Argentina, and you have as many recipes as provinces. In some cases, like this, there are personal recipes with small variations nobody else does. Do not expect to eat my empanadas anywhere, meat empanadas usually do not have tomato sauce.
Meat is not the only filling. Chicken, spinach, cheese and onions, basil, blue cheese, cheese and jam, corn, are only some of the options.