Tomato Sauce & Noodles

Someone motivated me to write this down today. I probably shouldn’t write such things down on account it represent a depth that goes beyond the personal. On the other hand, I should post something here for the month, eh?

Tommi’s Italian Tomato Sauce & Noodles.

The most important part of anything is… Some refer to it as soup. You know, the soup/sauce out of which life sprang…? Anywho. What biblical, non-biblical or scientific thinkers don’t understand is that there is something prior. It will be referred to here as the base. (Leave it at that, you thinkers!) Usually I start this in the morning so that it can cook all day. Cooking is something like “thinking” and “dreaming” about love - I think. Anywho. In a hot pan: olive oil… chopped fresh garlic… chopped onion (which ones?), dried oregano (but you can also put this in later) … Yeah, the base is about the quality of those things.

Don’t ask me about amounts. Get a life. At the least, read a friggin cook book or something. Experiment. It’s like fuckin’ - except you should start with a bit of romance. It’s always good that way. Yeah, read a book.

A little trick I use with my sauce-base is to add fresh red chili pepper. I suppose you can use green chilies. If you’re like many a good, romantic cook, chilies prevail in your life - or at least in your kitchen. If that’s the case there’s the issue of how dry the chilies are and if you should use the seeds. Remember: dried chilies can still be fresh. If I’m serving someone else my sauce - who I don’t know - I keep the chili seeds out. That’s a nice thing to do. Back to the sauté. Once the base of onions and garlic is glazed and transparent I add some red wine and continue the sauté - hanging my head over the thunderous steam. Is all absorbed? No? Well then…

I think absorption is a really cool thing. It not only reminds me of how I’d like to be with a woman but also… It reminds me of the pretext that oil (or hydrocarbons) is not a by-product of the re-working of biology by geology - as the traditional barrel pricing schemes seem to dictate. Instead, oil - that elixir that rules so much of our lives - is geology re-worked by biology.

What? That doesn’t make any sense? More here.

Once the base is prepared and the “soup” is steaming in the pan, wait for the right moment and then dump in a bunch of your favorite canned tomatoes. That’s right. I said canned tomatoes. This is not an issue about freshness. Canned tomatoes are the best because, well, fresh tomatoes take more than a whole day to get all that sweet, citric, earthly flavor out them. It’s already been done in the can. In my opinion, canned tomatoes are one the best things to come out of our lives being ruled by industrialization and corporatism.

Anywho.

In the evening I cook the noodles and then chop lots of fresh parmasean. (Making noodles and buying parmasean is another post; again, read a friggin book.) I usually buy enough fresh basil that you can bathe in it. I then take the cooked noodles and put them in a hot pan. I stir in the tomato sauce that has been cooking all day. Once the noodles show they are soaked in “sauce” I sprinkle in the fresh basil leaves and then comes my secret - the right touch of melted sugar. (Nothing more will be revealed…)

I had girlfriend once and her name was Carmel…

Once it’s all cooking together - you can see it on the noodles - I turn off the heat and then put in the parmasean. It’s neat to watch the the cheese and the sugar become one with the noodles. I do the flip and roll with the pan. The noodles and sauce twirl around in the air. I fill a large, deep plate with rolled up Tommi noodles & sauce and sprinke some fresh chopped large parsley leaves and, of course, more basil on top. Then, where applicable, fresh ground pepper.

Remember. Eat nothing else all day - let the hunger build till “dinner”. It should be like how you make love to your woman/partner.

This is not a rant. Good luck.

-tgs-