All of you amorous would-be turtle doves out there may want to pay attention to this one. When love is in the air nothing drips of romance more than a heavy feast in the dead of winter served by a partner with compatible pheromones. So grab your yin, yang, or attractive companion with whom you are "just friends" and prepare to fill your hovel with the warm scent of marinara sauce made from scratch. The dimensions of this meal are so perfectly rounded that even the coarsest of haters will be inevitably overpowered and hopelessly drawn to you.
Complexity of flavor and elegance of texture might not bring Bilbo the Tongueless Anti-Foodie to heel, but the weight of this thick sauce will certainly slow him to a crawl, at which point he can be tamed and neutralized. Suddenly he won't be in such a rush to "meet up with the guys" to toss used furniture off the overpass anymore. Plus he'll already be ensnared in conversation due to the long prep time that allowed the two of you to split a bottle or three of Chianti while slowly, patiently stirring. The anticipation of food will have no doubt worn him down as well, the drooling lug waiting for dinner while absorbing the smell of garlic and oregano, a guard-lowering throwback to the home-cooked meals of a more innocent time, back when trucker hats weren't ironic and people used phone booths.
If all the stirring and waiting and meeting of eyes is too much to bear, you should probably munch on hors d'oeuvres while the sauce is developing. Stuffed mushrooms work fine either with the meal or before, so use your own judgment. Just keep in mind that this is a serious sauce, requiring a good several hours to condense properly.
For the Stuffed Mushrooms gather the following:
12 ounces crumbled feta cheese
24 ounces white mushrooms
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons rosemary
Preheat over to 350 degrees. Wash the mushrooms, remove the stems. Dump the feta, rosemary, and olive oil into a bowl, mash together with your powerful (clean) hands until thoroughly mixed. Deposit lumps of greenish feta stuffing into each mushroom cap. Place mushrooms on an non-greased cooking tray, feta pointed up towards glory. Bake for 30 minutes. Serves four people.
In my experience these babies go down quick, so you might want to cook a double batch. Something about pop-able hot food makes these vulnerable to over-hunting.
As for the Marinara Sauce, here are the essentials:
6 tablespoons olive oil
30 cloves garlic
40 medium tomatoes
4 tablespoons oregano
4 tablespoons dried basil
2 teaspoons salt
1 pound spaghetti noodles
Firstly, rinse off the tomatoes. Dig out small craters where the stems used to attach, and cut an "X" over the crater. Plop the tomatoes into a pot bigger than you and pour boiling water over the lot of them. Let stand for about ten seconds, then dump out the water. The skins should peel off easily at this point. Dispose of the skins, begin to hand-mash the tomatoes to as fine a pulp as possible. When fully soupy, place over stove on medium. Next, mince the garlic. Put olive oil in large pan over stove on low, followed by garlic, oregano, and basil. Stir until garlic is soft, about five minutes. Do not let it brown. Place garlic, oil, oregano, and basil into tomato paste. Stir occasionally for two hours, then turn down to medium-low. The sauce will cook down significantly in volume. Continue stirring occasionally for four more hours. Add salt. Serve on spaghetti noodles. Makes four servings.
I must confess that this is a dish I do entirely by intuition, never measuring the ingredients and sometimes adding wine, chili peppers, or balsamic vinegar depending on the mood of the hour. If you don't want to use raw tomatoes, go ahead and buy them canned, if you must, as long as they're peeled. Six to eight large cans should be enough. Serve with wine and maybe a tossed salad if you're up to it. Parmesan, yeah, fine.
Don't rush the sauce, otherwise it won't condense enough to give you a fully developed flavor. It's a good code to live by, and I, for one, will always live by the Sauce. Stirring wasn't invented for silence; it was meant for conversation. By enjoying the process, the means become ends, and then we're not really waiting, are we? Then again, maybe your attractive "friend" really is waiting for dinner, and you're waiting for something else. Don't disappoint each other.
Don't rush the sauce, otherwise it won't condense enough to give you a fully developed flavor. It's a good code to live by, and I, for one, will always live by the Sauce. Stirring wasn't invented for silence; it was meant for conversation. By enjoying the process, the means become ends, and then we're not really waiting, are we? Then again, maybe your attractive "friend" really is waiting for dinner, and you're waiting for something else. Don't disappoint each other.
