August 27th, 2007
A few years ago when I actually attended a cooking school through HomeChef, the instructors strongly suggested that if you were going to cut corners in making pasta sauce, at least use the boxed stuff, like the Pomi Chopped Tomatoes, in place of chopping up tomatoes yourself. Any admittance of using a jar of tomato sauce or a can of chopped tomatoes was looked down upon as the ultimate cop out and sacrifice of taste and freshness.
Why? Apparently the sweet and tangy taste of tomatoes is compromised by canning it in those tin things. Jars of sauce are guilty of having lots of sugar and water added to them.
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Filed under: Italy, Kitchen | No Comments »
August 25th, 2007
Hit with a bout lately of work leaving precious free time left to cook a nice tomato sauce from scratch, I happened on this bargain at the local San Francisco Trader Joe’s.
Their Recipe #99: Traditional Marinara Sauce jar of spaghetti sauce sells for a whopping, brace yourselves, 99 cents! Yes, that’s $0.99, less than $1 (without tax) and all that. You’ve got to appreciate how they’re able to do this, when probably the most expensive piece of this purchase is the glass jar.
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June 26th, 2007
Pauline’s Pizza
260 Valencia
San Francisco, CA
415-552-2050
Tu-Sat 5-10pm
Dine-in or Take-out
Next to the old Levi Strauss building lies a clean, well-lit restaurant (not pizza parlor) that happens to serve kick-ass thin-crust pizza. The secret is in the fresh vegetables that are sourced from their own gardens in Berkeley and Angels’ Camp.
Though not dirt cheap, these pizzas provide great value in a nice ambience. I tried the Pesto (Medium, $13.50), and the Italian Combination (Medium, $17.25). The pesto is drizzled onto the pie after it’s baked. I usually sprinkle a ton of chili peppers and parmesan cheese on my pizzas by default, but this one was perfect without any additional tweaking.
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June 23rd, 2007
When you wake up in the morning in San Francisco and it’s already warm and the fog has burned off, you know it’s going to be a hot one. Gazpacho (or “gaspacho”) is a perfect recipe for cold tomato-based vegetable soup. It tastes better the more you let the pureed vegetable flavor blend together. I recommend at least an afternoon.
I always use my friend Chris’ recipe from many years back. I saw a similar gazpacho recipe posted on Allrecipes.com, submitted by Leia.
Thanks to Chris & Leia, here it is, with modifications listed:
INGREDIENTS
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Filed under: Spain, Meals from $5-15 per main course, Recipes | No Comments »
A few years ago when I actually attended a cooking school through HomeChef, the instructors strongly suggested that if you were going to cut corners in making pasta sauce, at least use the boxed stuff, like the Pomi Chopped Tomatoes, in place of chopping up tomatoes yourself. Any admittance of using a jar of tomato sauce or a can of chopped tomatoes was looked down upon as the ultimate cop out and sacrifice of taste and freshness.