Ummm, marinara sauce anyone?

All-purpose marinara sauce

(from Anne Burrell)

You know how sometimes you find a recipe and it has another recipe accompanying it? For example, a recipe for lasagna that has a recipe for marinara sauce that follows. Why do they always make it so the recipe that follows is SOOOO much more than you need for the recipe? That was the case with this one. I watched Anne Burrell make lasagna on FoodNetwork and it looked sooo good. And lasagna makes for really good freezable leftovers. So I decided to make the marinara sauce the night before I made the actual lasagna. Note: this is not the kind of recipe you can make real quick and then go to the library to study. It requires occasional stirring. It is, however, a good one to make while you watch an episode of Glee. It's like commercial breaks were just made for you to go stir the sauce. Another note: when a recipe calls for 4 28-ounce cans of tomatoes and you think that seems like a lot, IT IS. I ended up with sooo much marinara sauce I don't even know what to do with it all. Mom recommended freezing it because you can totally add meatballs real quick, use it for chicken parmesan, add it to some pasta, etc. She's such a thinker.

Step 1: Coat a skillet with extra virgin olive oil. Add 1/4 lb. diced pancetta (or bacon might be tasty) and cook a few minutes. Add 2 chopped Spanish onions and cook those until soft and smelling good, but don't let them get any color by stirring occasionally. Add 4 cloves of chopped garlic and cook another few minutes.

Step 2: Pass the tomatoes through a food mill (HA!). I remember Anne

Burrell once said that the food mill was one of her favorite kitchen tools. I really don't know what she uses it for so much because this is the first time I've ever encountered a need for one, so I improvised. Improvisation has failed me many a time, but not this time! I thought I would first try to mash the tomatoes through a strainer. Same effect, right? I'm not really sure what happens to tomatoes when they go through a food mill, but I can tell you that mashing them through a strainer is some serious work and absolutely not worth it. So I just dumped my 112-oz. of San Marzano's tomatoes into the pot and smooshed them a bit. Fill one of the 28-oz. tomato cans with water and add to the pot.

Step 3: Season the sauce with lots of salt, adding a little bit at a time and tasting it along the way, because tomatoes need lots of salt to bring out their flavor. Cook 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally (like during commercial breaks).

Lasagna recipe follows...