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S39E6: Marcella | Clip

Chef April Bloomfield makes Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce with onion and butter

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One of Marcella Hazan’s most famous recipes is a simple tomato sauce with onion and butter. Watch chef April Bloomfield make it here.

Recipe for Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce with onion and butter
For 6 servings

This is the simplest of all sauces to make, and none has a purer, more irresistibly sweet tomato taste. I have known people to skip the pasta and eat the sauce directly out of the pot with a spoon.

Ingredients:

  • 2 pounds fresh, ripe tomatoes or 2 cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice
  • 5 tablespoons butter
  • 1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half
  • Salt
  • 1 to 1½ pounds pasta
  • Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese for the table
  • Recommended pasta: This is an unsurpassed sauce for Potato Gnocchi, but it is also delicious with factory-made pasta in such shapes as spaghetti, penne, or rigatoni. Serve with grated Parmesan.

Instructions:

Put either the prepared fresh tomatoes or the canned in a saucepan, add the butter, onion, and salt, and cook uncovered at a very slow, but steady simmer for 45 minutes, or until the fat floats free from the tomato. Stir from time to time, mashing any large piece of tomato in the pan with the back of a wooden spoon. Taste and correct for salt. Discard the onion before tossing the sauce with pasta.

Note: May be frozen when done. Discard the onion before freezing.

From Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking: 30th Anniversary Edition by Marcella Hazan. Copyright © 1992 by Marcella Hazan. Foreword copyright © 2022 by Victor Hazan. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
TRANSCRIPT

- I am gonna make probably one of Marcella Hazan's most famous recipes.

And it's famous because it is so simple.

I'm gonna just add some tomatoes, a little bit of onion, a little bit of butter, salt, and then that's it.

- Her recipes are very exacting, but incredibly simple.

So you think about her famous tomato sauce, and it's the simplest sauce you can make, right?

I make it all the time.

So you take tomatoes, you cut an onion in half, and you put it in the sauce.

You melt butter into that warming tomato with some salt.

- And, what, 45 minutes later, you've got a wonderful sauce.

So, there was something about demystifying that was so wonderful about her.

- I'm gonna cut this in half.

I'm going to use these canned tomatoes.

These are very natural.

So you just basically throw about two pounds of tomatoes.

So a little bit of salt, little bit of butter.

It's probably like five tablespoons to two pounds of tomato and one medium onion.

I like to use a whisk, because it really kind of helps mush up the tomatoes.

I think we go through life just making things so complex and so stressful for ourselves, and the simplest things in life are the ones that really kind of blow your mind.

I think she would just do what she needed to do to make something amazing.

Mm, nice.

I think meeting Marcella was probably one of the highlights of my life.

You know, now I am all emotional (laughs).

Oh my God (chuckles).

I'm gonna turn it down just a touch, 'cause we got 45 minutes to go.

If we reduce too fast, then it doesn't give the onion time to do its thing.

You wanna have it on that nice lowish temperature that Marcella suggests in the book, and just kind of have it ticking away.

Have it sit there being happy.

Great things happen when things connect.

You know, it's the same with people and food.

It's the meeting of minds and the meeting of flavors, and it's, when I cook, and I know for a fact that Marcella felt this too, something deep inside your soul, you know, it's earth-moving.

You connect with it.

And I think that's why people love this sauce so much.

I'm just gonna take the onion out.

A lot of people are like, "Why would you discard the onion?

That's the best bit."

But the great thing about Marcella, really, is that she knows when to add stuff, what to add, when to take it out, when to not use it.

And then we're just gonna add the pasta.

So we'll just add that there, looks good.

So this is Marcella's very, very famous tomato sauce.

Simple, soulful, perfect.

Marcella, hope you're happy.

I hope I did a good job (laughs).