Paprika Tomato Sauce

Here's a recipe I make pretty often for dinner. Takes a bit of time (maybe 45 mins - 1hr depending how fast I prep), but it makes for a warming flavourful sauce with pasta.

Effort Rating: 3/5

Ingredients:

• 1 large Yellow/White Onion
• 3-5 big garlic cloves (honestly, as much garlic as you want - we all know garlic in recipes is a suggestion)
• An amount of olive oil to cover the bottom of your favourite large saucepan
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 heaping tablespoon of Sweet Smoked Paprika
• 1 heaping tablespoon italian spice blend (Marjoram, Thyme, Rosemary, Savoury, Sage, Oregano, Basil - just get the mix from your grocery spice aisle)
• 1 heaping tablespoon mushroom powder/umami spice blend (I use the trader joe's mushroom powder mix, but I'll need an alternative when I run out since they don't have that up here in Canada)
• Pasta, as much as you want to eat for this meal, probably like a cup or so
• 1 cup of your finest, cheapest, red or white wine (whatever you've got on hand - you can also use old dry vermouth even)
• Salt, to taste

Required Tools

• A Knife for chopping the aromatics
• A big sauce pan
• A can opener
• A pot to cook the pasta in
• A strainer to strain the pasta
• Another smaller pot or vessel to reserve some pasta water with
• Measuring spoons/cups, unless you're eyeballing the quantities (which is encouraged)
• A spoon or other implement for stirring

Instructions

Prep

• Start a pot of water boiling for your pasta to save a bit of time later
• Open up your can of diced tomatoes, also to save time later
• Mince the onion and garlic finely and set aside

Sauce it up

• Coat your saucepan with olive oil, and add your onion and garlic to it.
• Sweat the onion and garlic in the saucepan on medium-high heat till the onion is a bit transparent
• Dump in the diced tomatoes to the saucepan and mix in the onions/garlic
• Add your spices to the sauce and stir well. You want to use more spices than you think so you get a good amount of flavor.
• Simmer the sauce on low-medium heat while you get the pasta ready
• Add your pasta to your pot of boiling water and let it cook till it is at your preferred pasta preparedness level.
• Strain out the pasta water, saving it in another pot/bowl. Put the pasta off to the side for eating with the sauce once you're done.
• Take a cup of the pasta water and add it to the sauce.
• Add a cup of your finest cheapest cooking wine to the sauce. It'll look really soupy, but that's fine. We're gonna cook most of it off.
• Turn up the heat on the sauce to high, and cook off the liquid till the sauce is at a saucy consistency. Stir the sauce occasionally to prevent burning on the bottom.
• Once the sauce is reduced to a saucy consistency, take it off the heat and serve it with some pasta. Food!

Tweaks

You can kinda put as much garlic as you want, and as much of the spices as you want, but the listed quantities are the minimum I'd personally add, otherwise it'll come out a bit bland. If you don't want it as chunky with the diced tomatoes, you could use crushed tomatoes too for a more traditional sauce, but you'll probably want to add less liquid to it, and keep more of an eye on it so it doesn't spit bubbling tomato sauce all over the place. You can also do without the wine if you don't have any on hand, but you'll miss a little depth of flavour.