Last night I made my first tomato sauce from scratch. Good Eats sometime last week was the pantry episode, and I’d bought the makings of mire poix a while back, but never made it.

I’m not posting a detailed recipe because I just kind of made it from memory of the show and what I had at the time.

Started out by opening a can of whole tomato and dumping them into a strainer over a 4 qt sauce pan. While they drained, I diced some baby carrots and put them in a skillet with a little olive oil over a medium high heat. I cut up most of a yellow onion and added it. Smashed three cloves of garlic and tossed them in. While they cooked, I went back to the tomatoes and seeded them.

The tomato juice was drained into the pot which I put over a medium heat. I opened the spice cabinet and pulled out the first thing that looked like italian seasoning. As I dumped about a teaspoon into the pot I realized it was actually dried thyme. So I found dried basel to go with it. I also poured a tablespoon or so of red wine into the pot and left it to reduce down.

My onions were browning by this time, so I stirred them some. I went and cut up a couple of celery stalks and dumped them in too. After this had cooked a while I decided there weren’t enough onions in it, so I cut up more onion and put it in. I was a little worried because half the onion was cook and I was adding new onion. But it seemed to work out.

The juice had reduced down and the veggies looked cooked. I poured a little wine into the skillet to deglaze and then poured all the veggies into the sauce pan. Then I tossed in the tomatoes as well. Let this sit until I saw bubbles coming through.

But it didn’t look right. I was planning on serving it on some sautéed chicken breasts, which would lean toward a chunky sauce. Still, to me it looked wrong. Not really mixed enough. So out came the immersion blender, which pureed it nicely to the consistency of applesauce.

Took a taste, before adding salt or pepper. It was good. Had the Mrs taste it as well and she liked it, even if she take little bitty girly tastes.

Almost burned the chicken breasts, but they turned out ok if a little over browned and the sauce work great with them. I’ve got it in the fridge now and am thinking a little pasta might be in the works tonight.