Speedy Marinara Sauce with Lemon

This was one of those accidental recipes.  I started out making the 5 Minute Marinara from Barefeet in the Kitchen because I needed marinara to go with my toasted cheese ravioli and didn't want to spend a lot of time on it.  This is a recipe I had come across several months ago and was intrigued by, so it seemed like the perfect time to give it a go.

 

The recipe calls for 3/4 to 1 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes, and warns that the full amount yields a pretty spicy sauce.  I thought 1 tsp was a good, safe amount.  WRONG!  I tasted it and it was really good, but just that one little spoonful was very spicy.  The only other tomato products I had in my pantry were two small cans of tomato paste, so I added one along with some beef broth, thought it was still too spicy, so added the second can and more beef broth.  At that point, it was still a little spicier than I'd prefer, but definitely bearable, and anyway, I was out of tomatoes.  So I added the lemon zest and carried on with my ravioli.

 

Well, the tweaked recipe ended up being really good.  My husband, who usually isn't fond of lemon in savory dishes, loved it and gave it a rating of 10/10.  I think that's the highest he's ever rated any marinara sauce I've made.  I thought it was excellent, too.  Surprisingly complex flavors, rich, robust, and just really good.  The lemon zest makes it perfect.  The sauce does not taste like it was super quick to whip up and took 10 minutes (if you factor out all the fiddling I had to do) to make!  We only used about 1/2 cup of the sauce total for our ravioli, so have quite a bit left over, but this will probably be my default marinara sauce recipe when I need something quick.  I'll bet it would be great with ground beef added to make spaghetti, or with meatballs.  I'm planning to make Chicken Parmesan Meatballs soon with some of the sauce, and am also curious how it will be on pizza.

 

Quick Note:  I made this with 1 tsp red pepper flakes, but have reduced it to 1/2 tsp in the recipe below because that's how I plan to make it in the future.  1 tsp was still a little too spicy for me.  Also, I chose to use a can of whole tomatoes and pureed it myself instead of the crushed tomatoes that the original recipe calls for.  Whole canned tomatoes tend to be better quality than any of the other canned varieties, and they still have some nice texture when they're pureed.

 

  

Speedy Marinara Sauce with Lemon

 

1/4 C olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1/2 tsp salt

28 oz can whole tomatoes with their liquid, pureed with immersion blender OR crushed with your hands

12 oz can tomato paste

2 C beef broth (or water, plus beef soup base)

zest of 1 lemon

additional salt to taste (I used 1/2 tsp additional)

   

Add olive oil, garlic, pepper flakes, and salt to a large, cold, nonstick skillet.  Heat to medium and saute garlic, stirring constantly, until it's very fragrant and barely beginning to turn golden.  Add can of pureed tomatoes, tomato paste, and beef broth, stir until smooth, and bring to a low simmer.  Simmer gently for 5 minutes.  Turn off heat, add lemon zest, taste, and add additional salt if necessary.

   

Yield: About 10 servings

Ginger Apricot Cranberry Sauce

My Secret Recipe Club assignment for December was The Pajama Chef and this is one of the three recipes I made from that blog.  I made my official post for SRC a couple of days ago, but really wanted to share her Ginger Apricot Cranberry Sauce, too!

A bit of background: My husband loves homemade cranberry sauce, so I make it every Thanksgiving.  It's usually the very first Thanksgiving dish I make and I do it the night before.  I like cranberry sauce okay, and in the past have always just used the recipe on the bag of cranberries (cranberries, sugar, water).  It's good, but regardless of how much my husband likes it, we always end up throwing some of it away after a couple of weeks in the fridge.
 
Well, when I made this, we actually finished the entire bowl in a few days.  A first!  If that doesn't speak to how good it is, I don't know what would.  It's such a perfect combination of tart-sweet-spicy (from the ginger) and the apricot actually does manage to hold its own against the cranberry flavor.  I may experiment with other cranberry sauce recipes in the future- found one with crushed pineapple that appeals to my pineapple loving heart!- but this is definitely our default cranberry sauce recipe from now on.

Note: The recipe says to cut the halved apricots into thirds.  I thought that seemed really big and cut them into 6ths.  The apricots kind of fell apart during the cooking process and disappeared into the cranberries.  It still tasted amazing, but I think bigger pieces may be the way to go and will do it this way next year.

Ginger Apricot Cranberry Sauce

12 oz bag fresh cranberries, rinsed and drained

3/4 C sugar
1 t ground ginger

15 oz can halved apricots

 

Place cranberries in a pot and add sugar and ginger.  Drain the apricot juice into a measuring cup and add enough water to make 1 cup liquid.  Add to pot.  Cut apricots into quarters and add to pot.  Stir to mix.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries have popped and are softened, and the sauce cooks down and thickens.  This will take about 15-20 minutes.  Refrigerate sauce until ready to serve.

Creamy Salsa Dressing

When we were teenagers, my cousin and I loved a bagged salad kit that had a salsa dressing, so one day I experimented in my mom's kitchen and ended up with this dressing.  I've been making it for about 12 years now and finally measured the ingredients tonight.  It's a snap to make, and everyone I've served it to has really enjoyed it.  I've made it with countless types of salsa over the years (green salsa is great, too) and it's always fantastic.  The directions are really just a guideline and how much you need of each ingredient will depend on what salsa you use.  For example, some salsas result in a thinner dressing.  You can just add more sour cream if it's too thin for you.

This dressing is great made into a side salad with lettuce, tomatoes, a sprinkle of cheese, and some crushed tortilla chips, or you can make it into a dinner salad by also adding cooked taco meat, sliced olives, and sliced avocado.  Whatever you want, really.  We always love having taco salad!  It's also good drizzled over grilled chicken or in turkey wraps.  You can even use cream cheese instead of sour cream and make a dip.

Creamy Salsa Dressing

3/4 C of your favorite salsa

1/2 C sour cream

1 Tbsp lime juice

1/2 tsp cumin

salt to taste (I used 1/2 tsp but the amount will depend on the salsa and your preferences)

Puree all ingredients in a food processor, blender, or with an immersion blender.  Taste it and add more of any of the ingredients if you think it needs it.  The dressing will stay good in the refrigerator for about a week.

Yield: 1 1/4 C, about 6 to 10 servings depending on the size of your salads

Pizza Sauce

I've tried several pizza sauce recipes over the years and like this one the best, which I made up. It's very simple but yummy and doesn't need to be cooked. When I make homemade pizza I don't want to mess around with making a time consuming sauce! It also goes great with other things like breadsticks, zucchini patties, or anything that you need a side of pizza or marinara sauce for. I like Hunt's tomato sauce for this because I think it has good flavor but you can use whatever brand you want. You may want to add a little salt if you use another brand.

Pizza Sauce

8 oz can tomato sauce

1/2 t dried basil

1/2 t dried oregano

1/4 t dried rosemary

1/4 t black pepper

1/4 t garlic powder

1/4 t onion powder

If you have one, crush the dried herbs in a mortar and pestle to release the flavors. Stir everything together in a small bowl and use as desired.

Slow Cooker Spaghetti Sauce

Looking over the recipes I've posted so far, I sure do use my slow cooker a lot, don't I?! I can't help it, it's so convenient. This is the one I have. One of the reasons I love it is that it has 3 size crocks: 2 quart, 4 quart and 6 quart. You need to use the right sized crock for what you're making or it won't cook right, so this is extremely convenient. You can even pair together the big crock and the smallest one to make a water bath for cooking oatmeal overnight. I first saw it at Wal Mart a couple years ago but couldn't justify buying it because the one I had still worked. When that one bit the dust I practically squealed with joy :oD

I pretty much only use the big 6 quart crock for three things: chili, apple butter, and this spaghetti sauce. Every once in a while I make huge vats of chili and spaghetti sauce and then freeze it for later. We haven't purchased a jar of spaghetti sauce since I started doing it this way! I do like Prego, but I'm pretty sure that's only because it's what my dad always used when I was growing up. The other brands don't do it for me. Regardless, my homemade spaghetti sauce is definitely better. It is the thick, hearty, delicious result of much experimentation with cooking spaghetti sauce and I'm happy to say I created the recipe. It happens to be vegetarian and can be easily made vegan if you leave out the butter. Even if you're a meat lover I don't think you'll be disappointed. And don't fear the carrots! They get chopped up pretty small in the food processor and add texture and a bit of sweetness, but you can't even really see them when the sauce is done cooking.

Quick note: I buy store brand of most things, but to me there's a huge difference between store brand canned tomatoes and good quality ones. I use DeLallo canned tomatoes for this, which are very flavorful and don't need any added salt. You can use whatever brand you want but you may need to add salt to the sauce if you use another brand.


Slow Cooker Spaghetti Sauce

1/2 bunch fresh parsley, stems removed (can use the whole bunch)
1/2 lb carrots, peeled and chopped roughly
1 large onion, peeled and chopped roughly
6 cloves garlic, peeled

3 28 oz cans crushed tomatoes
1 28 oz can tomato sauce
2 12 oz cans tomato paste
1 1/2 C red wine
2 T brown sugar
3 1/2 t dried basil
2 1/2 t dried oregano
1 1/2 t dried thyme
1 1/2 t dried rosemary
1 t pepper
salt to taste (optional)
1 stick butter (optional)

Mince the parsley in a food processor, then the carrots, then the onion and garlic. Add to the crock of a 6 quart slow cooker. Add remaining ingredients except the butter and salt and stir well to combine. Cover and turn heat to high until the sauce comes to a boil, about 1 hour. Remove lid and cover with a splatter screen. This step is important if you don't want little orange dots on everything in a 6 foot radius! Cook the sauce for 5 more hours, stirring occasionally. Veggies should be tender and sauce should be rich and thick. Stir in butter and salt if desired.

Yield: 24 servings. Freeze some!

Green Tomato Salsa

Look, my first recipe to share! This year I grew a little container garden for the first time. Everything was planted in kiddie pools and I grew 4 kinds of lettuce, zucchini, peas, a couple herbs, and 4 kinds of tomatoes. Oh, those tomatoes! Everything did well except for them. It wasn't until after I planted all 8 plants that I learned tomatoes don't do well here because it's too cold. In spite of having a particularly chilly and wet summer, I did get about 15 delicious ripe tomatoes but that left me with a few bajillion green ones.

After making fried green tomatoes (good but only used up 2 of them) and rotini with green tomatoes and feta (very good tasty!), I was able to use up a few more of them in the Mexina Salsa Verde recipe from Allrecipes.com. The recipe needed a good amount of tweaking but we're happy with how it turned out. Definitely different than both regular salsa and salsa verde made with tomatillos, but still tasty and a great use for those millions of unripe 'maters! My version of the recipe makes a lot so we gave some away, ate some with chips, put some on taco pizza, and put the rest in the freezer for later. I'll probably make the rest of the tomatoes into green salsa too.

A few things to note: First of all, this recipe uses one of my favorite convenience products. Frozen diced onions! I hate chopping onions because the eyes on fire sensation really detracts from my enjoyment of cooking, so I buy the frozen ones most of the time. This salsa recipe uses an entire 12 oz bag. Also, you can either dice the tomatoes if you want chunky salsa or just chop them roughly if you want to put the salsa in the blender and get a smooth sauce (which is what I did this time around). You could also put the onions in after cooking the tomatoes if you want a stronger flavor. I guess you could try not cooking the green tomatoes at all but if you take a bite of a raw one, it makes your mouth feel really weird and dry which isn't something I want when I'm trying to enjoy salsa. Lastly, you could use lime juice instead of vinegar and I'm sure it would be delicious. My husband doesn't like too much citrus flavor in foods that aren't dessert so I only put in a little since I need him to help me eat the truckload of salsa I made.


Green Tomato Salsa

about 2 1/2 lbs green tomatoes, diced or chopped roughly
12 oz frozen diced onions (about 2 diced fresh onions)
1 C water
3 cloves minced garlic
2 T minced jarred jalapeno
1/2 bunch cilantro, stems removed
3 T lime juice
2 T white vinegar
2 t salt

Cook tomatoes, onions and water in a covered pot about 10 minutes or until tender. Let cool. Stir in remaining ingredients and pulse in blender until smooth or else leave chunky.

Yield: About 7 cups