Cauliflower with Potatoes & Farewell to Madhur

We've had a wonderful six months at I Heart Cooking Clubs, cooking delicious Indian food with Madhur Jaffrey.  For me, this has been something of a trip down memory lane, remembering the food and flavours of my childhood.  The food of course has been wonderful, but one of the things I've found most exciting about our time with Madhur has been the way some members of our group, who had never even tasted Indian food before, have embraced this cuisine and loved it.

I didn't manage to make as many dishes as I would have liked to, but I've certainly loved every single one of Madhur's dishes that I did make ...

... and if I had to choose a favourite, it would probably be the Prawns in a Dark Sauce, only because that was the most nostalgic dish for me.  I've made it several times again since, and the Yoghurt Marinated Baked Lamb and the Black Pepper Potatoes with Lemon Turmeric Aioli are also dishes that I keep coming back to.  Interestingly, the black pepper potatoes has been the most visited one of my Madhur posts too (almost double its nearest rival), so I guess a lot of you like that one too.

And, now comes the time to say our farewells to Madhur - an occasion tinged with a little sadness (as accompanies any "goodbye"), but also with excitement about our forthcoming chef, Yotam Ottolenghi.

For my final dish with Madhur, I chose Cauliflower with Potatoes (Phool gobi aur aloo ki bhaji) from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery, partly because this is the kind of simple, homely kind of dish that I think epitomises Indian home cooking for me, and partly because I had a head of cauliflower in the veggie crisper that need to be used up.  This dish doesn't have any sauce, and is fabulous just scooped up with some flatbread (I could happily make a meal of this on its own).  As it turned out I had this as an accompaniment to roast pork, and I think it would be a great addition to any other meal of roasted or grilled meats.

Cauliflower with Potatoes Recipe

Adapted from a recipe by Madhur Jaffrey from

Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery

Vegetarian

Serves 4-6 as a side dish

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

4x small or 2x medium potatoes

1x medium-sized cauliflower, cut into chunky florets

3-4 tablespoons neutral vegetable oil

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1x fresh red chilli, finely chopped (remove seeds if you want less heat)

1-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

generous pinch flaky sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

Boil potatoes in their jackets until just fork tender.  Drain and allow to cool completely.  Peel off the skins and cut into 2cm (3/4 inch) dice.  Set aside.

Heat oil in a large, non-stick frying pan over medium heat.  Add cumin seeds to the hot oil and, as soon as the seeds start to sizzle, add the cauliflower florets to the pan.  Toss the cauliflower in the pan until all the florets are coated in the oil and seeds.  Now, reduce the heat, cover the pan, and cook gently until the cauliflower is browned in places and just tender - stir from time to time.  About 6-10 minutes.

Once the cauliflower is tender, add the ground spices, chilli, potatoes, salt and pepper.  Stir gently to coat all of the cauliflower and potato with the spices, and continue to cook on low heat for a few more minutes until the potatoes have warmed through.

Serve hot, but is also good at room temperature.

If you would like to get to know Madhur a little better, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and see what they've all cooked up ...

... or check out Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking and many of Madhur's other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK or Fishpond NZ.

         

I'm also sharing this post at See Ya In the Gumbo hosted by the lovely Michelle at Ms. enPlace.

Plum & Cardamom Cake

The thing I love about plums - actually, there are several things I love about plums, this is just one of them - is the way they just seem to go on and on, one variety after another appearing each week at the market, so that plum season seems to linger well into autumn.  After all the other stone fruit  have finished for the season, the plums keep coming making it feel as though summer is lingering just that little bit longer.

After picking up a few kilos of plums at the market the other week, and having made a couple of batches of jam, I was in the mood for plum cake.  Flicking through Annabel Langbein's book More Taste Than Time, Fast Track Food for Busy People (a great book I've had in my collection for a long time), I came across her recipe for French Plum Cake.  Spiked with vanilla and lemon it sounded delicious, but it also seemed very "summery" and I was looking for something that felt a little more autumnal.

Then it came to me.  Having been in the midst of preserving season, I had been looking around at lots of books on canning and preserving lately.  In my search, I had stumbled across Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavours for the Modern Pantry by Liana Krissof.  I've not added this one to the collection yet, though it's on the wishlist, but after reading all the reviews and all the raves for the plum cardamom jam, I've been obsessed with that flavour combination ever since.

This seemed like the perfect inspiration for "autumnising" my cake.  So I added in the cardamom, obviously; I also left out the lemon, and replaced the sugar with brown sugar for a little more depth of flavour.  This is a big recipe, and although the original recipe calls for baking in two round springform tins, I baked one large "slab" cake in a brownie tin.

This makes a delicious dessert cake - also fabulous for breakfast!  It's best eaten warm on the day it's baked, and I loved it with a dollop of thick Greek-style yoghurt or a drizzle of runny cream.  Would be wonderful too with some good vanilla ice cream.  As I mentioned, this makes a lot of cake, and unless you're feeding a pretty big crowd you're going to have a lot of leftover cake.  This is not a bad thing, as this cake freezes exceptionally well.  Baking in a rectangular tin, meant that it was easy to cut into perfect, serving-size squares, with a plum half in each portion.  Once cut into portions, I wrapped each one in clingfilm and stashed them in the freezer - once thawed, 30 seconds in the microwave is all it takes for the perfect breakfast on the run or a quick mid-week dessert.

Plum & Cardamom Cake

Adapted from a recipe by Annabel Langbein from

More Taste Than Time, Fast Track Food for Busy People

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

8x fresh plums

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1-1/2 cups brown sugar

300g (10-1/2 oz) butter

3x free-range eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla paste (I used Heilala)

1 cup milk

3-1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).  Lightly grease a 22cm x 32cm (8-1/2" x 12-1/2") brownie pan, and line tin with parchment paper - you want the parchment paper to overhang the sides a bit so that once cooked you can lift the cake out of the tin rather than inverting it.

In a small bowl combine the first measure of brown sugar and cardamom.  Halve the plums, remove the stones, and put the plum halves into a medium sized bowl.  Add the sugar and cardamom, and toss through the plums.  Set aside for about 45 minutes.

In another bowl, cream together the butter and the second measure of brown sugar.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition to make sure each egg is full combined.  Stir in the vanilla paste.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and second measure of ground cardamom.  Now add the milk and sifted dry ingredients in batches, alternating between the two.

Once everything has been incorporated, pour the batter into the prepared tin, and arrange the plums (cut side up) in rows on top of the batter.  Just sit them on top - as the cake cooks, they will sink down into the batter.   Drizzle any fruit and sugar juices from the plums over the top.

Bake in the preheated oven for 55-65 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

This will be my submission this month to Sweet New Zealand, inspired by Alessandra Zecchini and hosted this month by the lovely Lesley at eat, etc ... - can't wait to see what sweet treats everyone has come up with this month.

I'm also sharing this post at See Ya In the Gumbo hosted by the lovely Michelle at Ms. enPlace.

Prawns with Courgettes (Jhinga aur ghia) & Exciting News

Most of you already know that one of my favourite places to play is at I Heart Cooking Clubs, a cooking club which chooses a different chef to feature every six months.  During that time, we explore the recipes and techniques of our chosen chef according to a different theme each week.  We learn a lot about our chef during that time, and a lot about each other as well through our regular posts.  A strong community has developed and I have loved being a part of it.  So I'm very, very excited and feel very honoured that I am about to become a co-host of this group along with the lovely Kim of Stirring the Pot and the lovely Deb of Kahakai Kitchen.

You probably also know that our chosen chef for the last six months has been Madhur Jaffrey, and I am submitting this (a little late - but better that than never) for our theme of One Pot Wonders.  Strictly speaking, this is not a one pot wonder insofar as I did cook rice in a separate pot, but hey it's near enough.  This dish is nice and flavourful, but certainly not spicy, and was great for a quick "toss everything in the pan", work-day dinner - definitely one I would make again.  Total cooking time about 10 minutes.  And now we come to our last week of cooking with Madhur, so do come back later in the week for my "farewell to Madhur" dish.

Now for more exciting news.  If you've been reading my posts for a while, you will know that one of my absolute favourite chefs is Yotam Ottolenghi, and every one of his books in my collection have been cooked from over and over again - not something I can say about some of the other cookbooks I own.  I also happen to know that a lot of you are big Ottolenghi fans too, so I'm very excited to tell you that our next chef at I Heart Cooking Clubs is indeed going to be Yottam Ottolenghi.  So, my Ottolenghi-loving friends, if you haven't played along at IHCC before maybe you'll feel inspired to join in the fun.  At the very least, why not pop over here and see what's coming up - our forthcoming themes and how to join in. 

In the meantime, you might like to try this ...

Prawns with Courgettes (Jhinga aur ghia) Recipe

Adapted (barely) from recipe by Madhur Jaffrey from

Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery

Makes 4 generous servings

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

2x medium-sized courgettes (about 300g - 10 oz)

flaky sea salt

3-4 tablespoons neutral vegetable oil

6x cloves garlic, peeled & finely chopped

large handful of coriander, roughly chopped, keeping leaves & stems separate

1x red chilli, finely chopped (with or without seeds)

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

3x large fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped, or 1x tin tomatoes

2.5cm (1 inch) piece fresh ginger, grated

juice of 1 lemon

425g (15 oz) prawns, shelled and deveined

Cut courgettes into thin batons, approximately 6 cm (2.5 in) long x .5 cm (1/4 in) thick.  Place in a colander, sprinkle with a generous pinch of flaky sea salt, and toss thoroughly.  Set aside for an hour to allow surplus liquid to drain out of the courgettes.  Remove from colander to a clean tea towel and pat dry.

Heat the oil in a medium sized pot or frying pan over medium heat.  Add the garlic and saute.  As soon as the garlic becomes fragrant, add the chilli, coriander stems (save the leaves for later), turmeric, cumin, tomatoes, ginger, lemon juice and another pinch of flaky sea salt.  (Add a pinch of cayenne pepper here too if you like a little more heat).  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently until the tomatoes have broken down and become "saucy".

Stir in the prawns and continue to simmer until the prawns are just cooked through and coated in a thick sauce.

Stir through the chopped coriander leaves and serve immediately.

I served this with some steamed basmati rice, but you could just as easily serve it with nothing more than a bit of flat bread on the side to scoop it up with.

If you would like to get to know Madhur a little better, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and see what they've all cooked up ...

... or check out Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking and many of Madhur's other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK or Fishpond NZ.

         

I'm sharing this post at See Ya In the Gumbo hosted by the lovely Michelle at Ms. enPlace.

Green Harissa

I really wanted to call this post Glorious, Gorgeous, Green Gloop, because that really kind of describes this sauce perfectly.

As a food blogger, I know that a much talked about subject is that of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in order to maximise the number of page views you get.  However, I've never really bought into that - it's not why I blog, and it's not the way I write.

That said, this glorious, gorgeous, green gloop is indeed so glorious and gorgeous that I do want people to find it, and as I have grave doubts about anybody actually searching for a recipe for "glorious, gorgeous, green, gloop", I figured I should just title this post by it's name - not quite as interesting, but better that than having anybody miss out on this by virtue of a quirky title.

I was initially inspired down this path after I saw this post a couple of weeks ago by the lovely Joanne at Eats Well With Others for Spice-Roasted Squash with Walnut-Green Harissa.  A few days later, I noticed the equally lovely Mairi at Toast talking about Ottolenghi's Fettucine with Fresh Seafood & a Green Harissa Dressing.  Hmmm, something of a trend here, I wondered?

I am a big lover of harissa, as you may have already gathered from my post earlier in the week, and when some nice green chilli peppers (only mildly spicy) showed up at my local market last weekend, I decided to investigate further.

I turned once again to Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark, and found their recipe for Mojo Verde.  This seemed like a good starting point, though I digressed considerably from the original recipe.

The final, delectable sauce has a very scant amount of heat, though you could definitely make it hotter if that is your bent, and bright complex flavours from the combination of herbs and spices, and is balanced out with some sweet, salty, sour notes from the preserved lemon.  You could definitely use this in a myriad ways - I'm thinking it would be great dolloped into a burger, stirred into any Moroccan-inspired dish as an alternative to regular harissa, blended into a dressing, or served alongside grilled seafood.  No matter how you use it, I urge you to give this a try.  It will keep for up to a week in the fridge, or freezes well.  I divide it up into small quantities (a couple of heaped tablespoons) and freeze in snaplock bags.

Green Harissa Recipe

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

4x large green mild chillies

(feel free to add some hot ones if you want more heat)

4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

generous bunch fresh coriander (about 60g), roughly chopped

bunch flat leaf parsley (about 30g), roughly chopped

1 tablespoon cumin seeds, toasted

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar

1/4 preserved lemon

4 tablespoons olive oil

flaky sea salt

Roast chillies over an open flame (the barbeque is ideal), or in a hot oven, until skins are blackened and blistered.  Remove from heat and put in a plastic bag;  leave to cool completely.

Once cooled, remove chillies and peppers from the plastic bag and peel off the blackened skins - they will slip off easily.  Remove and discard seeds, roughly chop and put into a food processor.

Add garlic, coriander, parsley, cumin, oregano, and vinegar to the food processor.  Flick any seeds out of the preserved lemon (don't discard the flesh), rinse to remove any excess salt, and put the flesh and the skin into the food processor.

Blitz until you have a smooth paste.  Taste and add flaky sea salt if desired - the preserved lemon is salty so you may find it unnecessary to add any extra salt.

Harissa

Looks can be deceptive.  Those who know me will have discovered that I exude (most of the time anyway) an air of outward-calm.  It seems that very little ruffles my pretty little feathers.  And for the most part that would be true.  But on occasion, some well-disguised inner turmoil and fear lurks.  For example, lately I've gotten to worrying that you may be bored with all the tomato stuff I've been sharing in recent weeks - after all four out of the last five posts about tomatoes is possibly a little tiresome for even my most ardent of followers.  So even though I am longing to share my tomato basil jam and tomato tarts with you, today I will give you something a little different.

I had never really heard of harissa, until a few years back when I started to get interested in Moroccan food and it seemed to crop up as an ingredient in many of the dishes I discovered.  As such, I took it for granted that it was something of a Moroccan household staple.  So it was interesting to learn, that although this may be the case these days, harissa is actually Tunisian in origin.  Essentially, it is a hot chilli paste, flavoured with other herbs and spices, and used as an ingredient in meat, fish and vegetable dishes.  I suppose in many ways, as garam masala is to the Indians, so harissa is to the Tunisians and Moroccans, and every household will have their own recipe for it.

I've come across many recipes for it both on the internet and in books, one of my favourite being that found in Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark (one of my favourite cookbooks), and their recipe is my principle inspiration.  I've played around with a lot of these recipes, tweaked them here and there, to find the combination of herbs and spices that I like, and this is the result.

You can also play around with whatever combination of peppers and chillies you might like to use for this.  I've made it on occasion with bottled roasted peppers and frozen chillies in the winter when fresh ones aren't around;  I've made it using only dried chillies (about a cupful soaked in warm water to soften).  You can use whatever kind of chillies and peppers you like to get your desired amount of heat;  also please yourself whether you leave seeds in or take them out.

This time around I used eight of these largish, slightly spicy, but not too hot chillies, from which I discarded all the seeds, plus four long, skinny, much hotter chillies with the seeds retained.  My resulting harissa definitely has a slight kick, but not agressively so, and it provided just the right amount of heat in the fish tagine I added it to.

This makes quite a big quantity, considering that you would normally only use a tablespoon or two at a time in any given dish.  It will keep in the fridge for about a week, but freezes well.  I put it into little snaplock bags (a couple of heaped tablespoons in each bag) and then stash them in the freezer - perfect for taking out just exactly the right amount for an instant Moroccan dinner.

Harissa Recipe

Inspired by recipe from Sam & Sam Clark

From Moro East

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

8x large, not too hot chillies, or red peppers

4x hot chillies

1x tomato

3 teaspoons caraway seeds

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

2 teaspoons smoked paprika

4x cloves garlic, roughly chopped

juice of 1 lemon

4 tablespoons olive oil

flaky sea salt

Roast chillies and peppers over a naked flame (the barbeque is ideal), or in the oven, until the skins are blackened and blistered.  Remove from heat and put into a plastic bag and leave to cool completely.

Also roast the tomato until the skin is blackened and split.  Set aside to cool.

Roast the caraway, cumin and coriander seeds in a dry pan over medium heat until lightly toasted and fragrant.  Remove from heat, allow to cool, and then grind to a powder either in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle.

Remove chillies and peppers from the plastic bags and peel off the blackened skins - they will slip off easily.  Remove and discard seeds from larger chillies or peppers.  Leave seeds in smaller, hotter chillies depending on how much heat you want.  Roughly chop and put into a food processor.

Remove the skin from the tomato, chop roughly and add to the food processor.

Add the roughly chopped garlic, ground spices, paprika, lemon juice and olive oil to the other ingredients in the food processor.  Blitz up until you have a smooth paste.  Add a generous pinch of flaky sea salt, blitz again, taste and adjust seasoning to your liking.

Yellow Tomato & Ginger Conserve

I need to make a small confession.  I’ve spoken much in recent posts about our fabulous tomato crop, which might lead you to believe that I’m quite the gardener.  In truth, I have a profound fear of pretty much anything bigger than an ant and smaller than a cat.  Not only does this include any rodents and rodent-like critters (e.g. hamsters, rabbits, ferrets, etc), but all manner of insects and garden creatures.  Creepy crawly things, such as spiders, cicadas, worms, caterpillars, earwigs, and so on, while seemingly harmless to most of you I’m sure, fill me with abject terror.  I also have quite a phobia about the feeling of dirt on my skin - yes, I know you can wear gloves in the garden, but I seem to have smallish hands and gardening gloves (even the small size ones) always seem so large, so that my hands seem to flop around in them like the proverbial in a bowler hat!

So, the long and the short of it is that my gardening prowess extends to supervising (something for which I’m convinced I have an absolute gift), staking up the tomato plants (it’s creepy and scary, but I can just manage that bit), and harvesting, which is of course the great joy of any vegetable garden.

As part of my harvesting duty, I’ve been gathering bowl after bowl full of these babies ...

Little yellow, tear-drop shaped, cherry tomatoes.  I like to eat these straight off the vine while I’m harvesting other things - it’s kind of like eating candy and feels like a bit of a treat for being brave enough to go into the garden.  I love them also tossed into salads and pasta dishes, and I’ve discovered that they make great jam.

I came across a recipe for Yellow Tomato Conserve in A Passion for Preserves by Frederica Langeland, which seemed like a great way to use up some of the surplus.  I adapted the recipe only slightly, adding some crystallised ginger in at the end, and the results were so good I couldn’t wait to make a second batch, which I made without the ginger (since not everyone is a ginger lover).  Both variations are exceptionally good.  The colour is gorgeous and I’m loving it on crumpets in the morning for breakfast, although I think there are enough savoury notes in the flavour that it could be paired with other foods in the same way you might a sweet chutney.  I’m thinking that this could be quite a nice accompaniment to Indian food.  Either way, I hope you’ll give this a try.

Yellow Tomato & Ginger Conserve Recipe

Adapted from recipe by Frederica Langeland from

A Passion for Preserves

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

1kg (2lb) yellow tear-drop cherry tomatoes

1 lemon

4 cups sugar

1/2 cup water

knob or two of butter

1/4 cup crystallised ginger, very finely chopped (optional)

Trim the stem ends from the tomatoes and cut them in half.

Cut the lemon into quarters.  Flick out any seeds, and then cut the quarters into very thin slices.

Put water and sugar into a large pan, stirring constantly until the sugar is dissolved and you have a syrup.

Add the tomatoes and lemon slices to the pan, and cook until thick about 40-45 minutes.  Towards the end of the cooking time, stir in a knob or two of butter to disperse any scum.

Remove from heat and stir in the crystallised ginger if using.

Fill hot, sterilised jars to within .5cm (1/4 inch) of the top.  Using a damp cloth, wipe the rims of the jars clean, and put on the lids and screw on firmly.  Turn jars upside down for a couple of minutes, then turn upright again and leave to cool completely.

Best Tomato Pasta Sauce Ever

I say it so often here that I should not have been surprised by this.  The best food of all is that which hasn't been messed with too much, but which is a simple combining of good quality, great tasting ingredients.  Yet, I was still shocked at how blindlingly good this simple tomato pasta sauce tasted.

In my effort to keep up with my massive tomato crop I've been telling you about, making some tomato ketchup seemed like an option.  "But why?" inquired the other mouth that I feed.  He is of the opinion that nobody could do a better job of it than Watties, and a sauce that actually tastes of ... well, tomatoes ... instead of preservatives and other things you can't pronounce, would just be too much of a shock to his tastebuds.  In fairness, he's come a long way and appreciates great food when it's given to him.  But there are some things he will always consider to be vaguely inferior when made at home - namely, tomato sauce, ice cream, and bread.  Still, I'm convinced that if I can come up with a good tomato sauce, and sneak it into the Watties bottle when he's not looking, then I have a pretty fair chance of passing it off as the "real deal".  Keep watching this space!

In the meantime, I decided a batch of tomato pasta sauce would take care of a few tomatoes, and would never go astray around our house.  Of course, when looking for a good sauce recipe, the first place I turned to was the Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan.  Marcella is the high priestess of Italian cooking, as far as I'm concerned, and this book is like my bible when it comes to Italian food.  Trust me when I tell you that, if you have no other Italian cookbook in your collection it should be this one.

When I found Marcella's recipe for Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter, my initial reaction was that I could "trick it up a little" by adding in some garlic, maybe some roasted red peppers, maybe some chilli flakes for a bit of kick, a bit of freshly ground black pepper even.  And then I decided to just allow Marcella's wisdom to prevail and stick with the recipe (a rare thing for me), and am I ever glad that I did just that.

This sauce consists of nothing more than tomatoes, an onion, a little butter, and a sprinkling of salt - that's it, nothing more.  The onion is simply cut in half and then discarded at the end of the cooking time, rather than diced into the sauce, so it serves to ever so delicately "fragrance" the sauce rather than overpowering it.  The flavour is wonderfully sweet and so intensely "tomatoe-y" that it's almost shocking.  This sauce is as intensely flavoured as any I've ever tasted, and yet it maintains a freshness and purity of flavour that is a sheer delight.  Think of the flavour of a freshly picked tomato, still warm from the sun, sliced thickly and set on top of freshly buttered toast, and you have pretty much exactly that in sauce form.

We enjoyed this tossed through some pappardelle with a sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan.  Marcella also recommends it as being a great accompaniment to gnocchi.  I hope you'll give it a try.  For best results use sun-grown fresh tomatoes, picked at the perfect stage of ripeness - out of season, hot-house grown tomatoes, picked early and ripened in the supermarket chiller, just won't cut it.  Marcella says you can also used tinned tomatoes.

Best Tomato Pasta Sauce Ever Recipe

Adapted from recipe by Marcella Hazan

from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Makes enough for four servings of pasta

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

1 kg (2x pounds) tomatoes

1x onion

100g (3.5 oz) butter

flaky sea salt

Peel tomatoes and discard the skins.

Remove and discard any woody cores from the tomatoes and roughly chop the flesh.  Cut the onion in half.  Put tomatoes, onion, butter, and a generous pinch of sea salt into a large saucepan.

Simmer uncovered very gently, stirring from time to time, and mashing the tomatoes with a wooden spoon, until the tomatoes have completely broken down and the sauce is reduced and thick - about 45 minutes.

Discard the onion, and immediately toss through pasta, or cool completely and freeze for later use.

I'm sharing this post at See Ya In the Gumbo, hosted by the lovely Michelle at Ms. enPlace;  at Foodie Friday, hosted by Designs by Gollum; and at My Meatless Mondays hosted by Chaya at My Sweet and Savory.