Elbow marinara pasta

This is a lesson by culinary analogy.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 can of Cento peeled tomatoes
1 beefsteak tomato or a couple or three roma tomatoes
tomato paste (I used Cento)
salt (something like 1 tsp or maybe a little more)
roasted fresh garlic, 4 or 5 cloves
olive oil
some basil
some oregano
some thyme

Recipe (for two people):

The playlist for this recipe consisted of music by Diana Krall, Yuja Wang, Oscar Peterson and Vince Guaraldi.

After I set the playlist, I roasted the garlic.

To roast the garlic, I peeled five garlic cloves, placed them in an aluminum muffin pan, drizzled olive oil on it, and put it in the oven for about 20 to 25 minutes on 400F. Then I let those cool.

Then, I blanched the fresh tomatoes (I boiled some water in a sauce pan, then dropped the tomatoes into the boiling water for something like 45s to a couple of minutes, until the skin began to pull away. I took them out of the water with tongs, put them in an ice bath, then peeled the skin off).

Into a large mixing bowl, I emptied the can of Cento tomatoes and crushed them (squeezed them) into small bits with my hands. I took the blanched tomatoes and did the same thing in the same bowl.

I put about four or five tablespoons of tomato paste into the bowl. I plucked the fresh basil, oregano, and thyme pedals from their stems and dropped them into the mixture and stirred vigorously. Then I added salt to taste.

With a fork, I mashed the roasted garlic on a plate. Then, I drizzled a pinky-finger-height amount of olive oil into the stainless steel sauce pan and let the olive oil get warm. In went the garlic, for literally just a few seconds.

Right after that, I transferred all of tomato mixture into the saucepan, stirred stirred stirred, got it boiling for two seconds while stirring the whole time, then dropped the heat down to simmer. It simmered, covered, for about 40 minutes while I stirred thoroughly every five or seven minutes or so.

Meanwhile, I boiled the elbow macaroni as the instructions said, and when it was ready, I put the macaroni on the plate, then put the sauce atop it.

Then I shaved some tomato basil bellavitano, and had a chilled mango lemonade with my meal along with warm fresh bread.

Options:

You can add sausage or other meats.
You can eliminate the cheese if you're lactose intolerant.
This works with any pasta.
You don't have to buy Cento--this is a great recipe if you have aging tomatoes.
You can adjust if you're on a low-salt diet.
You can make extra because the sauce gets better the next day.

* * * * *

The base of this recipe was taken from The Kitchn, but it was heavily modified to suit my tastes. Once I learned how they did it, I made it my own.

This is music.

As a music teacher, I don't want my students to mimic Mitsuko Uchida. Yes, be inspired by her, like I'm inspired by Alexandra Foster, but let us guide our students to observe how Ms. Uchida makes the music her own so that our students can make the music their own...so that we recognize them and their sound when we hear it.

We most definitely teach this.

Contact us: Lessons@ThePianoInstructor.net, or call us at 1.313.919.2806.