The Golden Fruit

Tomato sauce: the life's blood of any good kitchen!

There is something to be said for the Italian-American tradition of cooking crushed tomatoes for 8 hours, with various spices and a splash of Chianti, but despite what those Sicilian mainstays in your favorite Brooklyn neighborhood will tell you, that is NOT what most native Italians will call a "plain" tomato sauce...the famous "marinara."

The first time I ever heard the term "marinara," I'll admit that even I thought it had something to do with seafood. I mean, it has the prefix "marin--" right in there. As a matter of fact, marinara sauce was served aboard ships, because the lack of meat, and the high acidity of tomatoes, meant that it didn't spoil quite as quickly in the galley.

I will further admit that in our family, we're not too proud to use tinned crushed tomatoes--though we will often splurge for the San Marzano variety, which are famously grown in the volcanic earth of the Campania region. In today's post, though, we are working with fresh local tomatoes from South Florida fields. Twenty years ago, our own house was surrounded by tomato fields!

First, the tomatoes are scalded until the skins split.

Next, I scald my own hands by peeling the skin off. 

Tomatoes are then blitzed in the food processor, but we really prefer to keep the sauce a little on the chunky side, just to really enjoy that tender, fresh bite of the fruit--

Into the pot. Now, for a traditional marinara, you would have first put a few cloves of fresh garlic in to sizzle with some olive oil, then added the sauce, salt, basil leaves and a few crushed red pepper flakes, which is probably my very favorite style--

--but in this case, we made the sauce a bit milder, with basil and sweet Vidalia onions...more "alla fiorentina" (Florence-style). I am always under the impression that the further south one travels in Italy, the spicier things get, and that's probably due to the Arabic influences in the south. (N.b. Italy is a fairly small country, and what can be called "arabic" influence--and Byzantine, for that matter--is fairly obvious even in the architecture as far north as Venice. Just look at the bronze statues of the Moors in Saint Mark's Square). At this point, it's fairly obvious that Italy is, and has been, as much a melting pot as any other major country on earth.

Sugo di Pomodoro alla Fiorentina:

Can't you just smell it? :)