I would be hard pressed to pick my favorite dish to prepare.
I just love to make soup any soup and putting together a holiday meal that features the likes of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and fixins' is right up my alley.
But undoubtedly near the top of my list would be sauces. I don't mean sauces such as salsa or guacamole that you dip chips into or the ones you use as a marinade for meat or fish or with stir-fried vegetables .
I'm talking about Italian sauces, the kind you can serve over pasta and rice. Or just plain, for that matter.
And what I've found is that no matter how simple the sauce is to make, it can be fabulous if you have the right ingredients.
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A case in point is my red pepper and eggplant sauce, which I later discovered is very close to one in Dom Deluise's "Eat This You'll Like It" cookbook.
The sauce started out much like my standard marinara, in which onion, garlic and celery is sauteed in some extra virgin olive oil.
However, to the mix I added some of my garden vegetables that had been residing in my freezer two nice, sweet red bell peppers and eggplant. The peppers had been cored and frozen whole (just in case I wanted to stuff them), and the eggplant had been sliced and sauteed before going in a freezer bag.
Then, I added some tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste and seasonings and let the sauce come to a boil before simmering it for about a half-hour.
The meal was complete with some crusty bread and a tasty salad.
From start to finish, the sauce doesn't take more than 40 minutes to make and easily could be put together after work.
Another quick and tasty sauce that I love comes from my well-worn Deluise cookbook. "Mama's (and Michael's) Meat Sauce" was one of the first recipes I tried after getting the book more than 10 years ago. The dish, besides containing ground beef, whole tomatoes and tomato paste, features shredded carrots and about a dozen sliced mushrooms.
Again, this sauce can be made and on the table in less than an hour, and it's excellent served over any kind of pasta.
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There are a couple of keys to both of the aforementioned recipes, I think. One is the spices. Oregano is featured in my eggplant-red pepper sauce recipe, while thyme is the key ingredient in the meat sauce.
The other is the tomato connection. Besides having a rich flavor and high liquid content, tomatoes (my favorite veggie or are they fruit?) have a very soft flesh that breaks down easily and has the right consistency to thicken up into a sauce.
Most important, use your imagination. Sauces can be made in a snap with all sorts of ingredients.
And you don't have to be Italian to make a good sauce.
Tiedeman is food editor at the Herald. He can be reached at 780-1136 or toll-free at (800) 477-6572, ext. 136, or jtiedeman@gfherald.com .
