I'm On A Quest To Find The Ideal Tomato Pizza Sauce....

[fierywoman]

4. When I lived in Venice, Italy, my favorite pizza place made the sauce by

taking the whole, peeled tomatoes out of the can (without the liquid around them) and putting them in the food processor. And then spreading it on the pizza. Try this with a can of tomatoes (yeah I know $$$) from Italy and see what happens. What I learned from living in northern Italy for 8 years is that less is more ... you don't want a sauce that boils for hours on a pizza!

As for a basic tomato sauce for pasta, it cooks as the pasta cooks: 1 crushed garlic clove in a little olive oil, add above type tomatoes scrunched (broken up) with your hand, maybe the tiniest bit of liquid from the can, salt (my neighbor would say: to suck out the flavor!). Before you serve it, you remove the garlic clove. "Grana" (parmesan cheese) sprinkled lightly on top of the pasta. If you've put the proper amount of sauce on the pasta, there should be no sauce remaining at the end, and you should always be able to taste the pasta through the sauce. While we're at it: portion of dry pasta per person: 90-100 grams (yeah, they measure it. ) It's a way different way of looking at food than what we do in the US.