Penne Covered In Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter By Marcella Hazan

For a late lunch this afternoon, we decided to make Marcella Hazan’s famous Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter.  This comes out of the Italian cookbook recommendation I made last week and can be found on page 152.  It’s not what you think of when you conjure up visions of a traditional marina sauce for spaghetti so be careful not to compare the two; they are different, though I am so fond of this incarnation that I find it hard to desire anything else.  If you prefer heavier sauces, this might not be your cup of tea.  You will never know until you try it.

Adding to the appeal: The tomato sauce with onion and butter recipe is another example of a food that costs next to nothing, just like the leek and potato soup from a few days ago.

Here is the breakdown from my local grocery store:

• Two pounds of tomatoes cost $1.98
• A one pound yellow onion costs $1.68
• Five tablespoons of butter costs $0.47
• A pinch of salt costs $0.02
• A package of penne pasta costs: $1.29
• Total raw ingredient price before sales tax: $5.44
• Sales tax in my state: $0.26
• Grand Total: $5.70 raw ingredient cost

To put that into perspective, consider that for someone who was earning a living through a low-wage retail job, it would take around $7.00 in pre-tax earnings to pay for a dinner made up of Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter.  This would be less than an hour of paycheck to put food on the table for yourself, a spouse, and at least one child.  If you had a side dish, such as a fresh loaf of rosemary, garlic, and lavender bread, you could stretch it much further and feed more people good-sized portions.

Not only that, but like many of the recipes in Hazan’s Italian cookbook, it’s easy.  The entire dish takes around ten minutes of prep time, then you let it simmer in a sauce pan for 45 minutes as the sauce concentrates.  Meanwhile, you boil some pasta on the side.  You could be working, reading, watching television, or doing the laundry as dinner made itself, filling your home with the scent of amazing home cooked Italian food.

The final benefit?  The tomato sauce has no preservatives.  There is not a lot of excess sodium.  It’s actual food rather than foodstuffs.  That is becoming increasingly rare in this world.  You can cook it in batches and keep it frozen for future use to save time, reheating it for quick meals.

The ingredients for Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter include only two pounds of tomatoes, one onion (which is split in two and cooked in the sauce but later removed), salt, and five tablespoons of butter.  That is it.  It’s as simple and pure as you can get in terms of components or flavorings.

You have to plunge the tomatoes into boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds to blanch them. The moment we added the tomatoes, the water came to a stand still and within ten seconds, was bubbling again.

Remove the tomatoes from the water, and when safe to touch them, rip off the skins (which might have begun to peel).

Cut up the tomatoes into uneven chunks, transferring them into a sauce pan.  Remove the cores so you don’t get any hard bits into the sauce itself.

Now that the tomato sauce base is done, we need to add the onions and butter …

The split onion, which has been skinned, is put into the pan to add flavor. It will be removed and thrown away before you serve the sauce. You also need to cut up 5 tablespoons of butter and put it into the tomato base, as this will impart additional flavor during the simmering process. The pan needs to simmer, with an occasional stir, for 45 minutes or until the butter separates from the tomato juices. You’ll notice it getting thicker and thicker.  When you stir, mash down any large pieces of tomato to break them up into smaller parts; a task that will become increasingly easier as the heat softens the sauce.

Once the tomato sauce has reduced, the butter should be visible on the top of the tomato juices and the onion halves can be removed.  As this is a sauce based entirely on fresh tomatoes and does not use a concentrated tomato paste, the color will look more comparable to the inside of the tomato when you cut into it rather than a deep red.  That is normal.

We added the tomato, butter, and onion sauce to a penne pasta and then sprinkled some fresh parmigiano-reggiano cheese on top of the dish.

You wouldn’t have to use penne for the tomato sauce with onion and butter – Hazan says you could go with a potato gnocchi, spaghetti, or rigatoni.  You can also freeze the pasta sauce when you are finished for reheating later.  It would be easy to make a batch on the weekend and keep it in storage for fast meals throughout the week, whether you added it to pasta or used it as a component in another Italian dish you were making.

Marcella Hazan’s classic dish from Italy is clean and refreshing, with the enrichment from the butter adding a nice addition to the tomato sauce.  It would also be good cold served salad-style in chilled bowls during the summer.  It reminded me of this bow tie basil pasta recipe from several years ago.  We haven’t had that in awhile.  I should bring that back to the site.