Being all saucy and hodgepodge

Another thing that I've experimented with this fall has been making pasta sauce from scratch. Isa did a great tutorial on her ppk blog last year, but I've been a lot more inexact with my sauce making. Actually, both batches in my freezer have drastically different flavor profiles. The most recent being a bit of a hodgepodge of things lingering in my fridge from other meals that needed to get used up. Along with the usual tomatoes, my last batch also included mushrooms, a lonely sweet pepper, basil, and some red wine that was lingering past its prime.

I tried to use a recipe the first time that I tried it, but making sauce isn't terribly difficult when you use the lazy (wo)man's method. I don't feel like spending a ton of time taking the skin off my tomatoes, so I just leave it on. It doesn't really matter too much since I'll be sticking my hand blender in the pot at the end anyway. I started out with chopping up some garlic and throwing it in the pan, then deglazing with wine or cooking sherry. Then I added the pepper and mushrooms and let them cook for a few minutes until adding the tomatoes. The timing wasn't exact, and I think that I let it cook for 45 minutes or so, or until I thought that the tomatoes had broken down enough. Then went in the basil as it cooked for 5-10 more minutes. Salt, pepper, and a tiny amount of oregano went in before I blended the heck out of it.

Not very exact, but the end product looked good enough, and it'll be refreshing to use later in the winter when fresh tomatoes are scarce. (Plus, I can impress friends with my saucy skills and all...)