Sauces and Dressings

Core Pizza - The Sauce

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Ingredients:

This sauce is a rich and flavorful example of a "Core American" sauce, and it's another favorite. Every now and then, I get in the mood for this, instead of the lighter New York sauce. Note that this recipe makes enough sauce for leftovers, unless you like a very strongly sauced pizza! It is a very bold sauce and should not be overused. "Paint" the crust with it; don't drown it. The rest can be frozen for later use. Here's how to make it:

Saute the garlic and onion together until the onions are well cooked. Add the fennel, tossing quickly over the heat, then add tomato paste. Add herbs, pepper, and salt to taste.

What you'll have at this point is a rather thick glop. It must be thinned with some kind of fluid. Another point of personal choice is upon us. A bold red wine is one way to go; this makes a sauce that is likewise very agressive and flavorful and truly memorable. Some find the flavor a bit too strong, however, so you may wish to experiment with a bit of water or milk along with the wine. Milk can be used entirely, in fact, and a very yummy, much milder sauce results. If you have a heavy hand with the herbs, milk is a good choice. I've been known to toss in a bit of vinaigrette to confuse people, too. It adds nicely to the flavor. Optionally, a bit of honey or sugar can be used to cut the acid of the tomato flavor.

Note that, when you use wine, cooking out the alchohol is optional!

The Sauce - Simple

A few tablespoons of canned, crushed tomatoes
A sprinkling of whole or crushed fennel seed
herbs and pepper and salt
The sauce that I like best is a good deal more "New York style" than it is "Core America." The Core American sauce is a simmered sauce with lots of flavor, and is provided below as Sauce Version II. This sauce is the kind that you'll find on the best pizzas in my Native Homeland - which is to say, the grey-skied stretch of coastal states known as the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, in the corridor of towns stretching from Richmond to Boston. There, in little Greek and Italian pizzerias, you'll find the good stuff, and part of the secret is the sauce.

And the secret is that it's no "sauce" at all - simply crushed tomatoes from a can, spooned onto the crust directly and then sprinkled with fennel, a few herbs, and salt and pepper, to taste. Before sprinkling, spread the tomatoes evenly around the circle of dough with a wooden spoon, your fingers, a spatula, or (for the avant-garde) a live gerbil (wear gloves; they scratch). This sauce is light and full of bright, tomato flavor. It can be put on thin or thick, as you like it.

That's it. That's the whole sauce, honest. Move on.

Note: Canned tomatoes? Very definitely. In addition to being an economic necessity in the pizzerias that made this sauce famous, canned plum tomatoes are simply the best for sauces. The tomato varieties available fresh (in the United States, any way) aren't great "sauce tomatoes," although they make excellent additions, as a topping. That's the way Queen Margherita had her pizza "sauced," after all - with fresh tomatoes only. But we can have the best of both worlds. To use fresh tomatoes as a topping, chop or slice them and place them directly on the sauce, before any other ingredients.

Posted by Phoxxe at March 30, 2005 02:27 AM | Comments (0)