My kind-of famous tomato sauce

Ok, so it's not really famous famous, but my family loves it. I have two recipes, one of them is my husband's. I honestly like his better, but I'll tell you both and you can decide. His is ridiculously simple to make, and requires very little work! He actually got it from a very popular pizzeria owner. The owner was very adamant about giving out his recipe, understandably so, but my husband was able to get it out of him. SO here it is!

Ingredients:

1 can of crushed tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
1 TBSP Olive oil
2-3 leaves of fresh Basil

Empty the can of crushed tomatoes in a medium saucepan (NO oil/garlic etc). Cook uncovered on low heat for about 40 minutes. You just let it sit there, and let the flavor of the tomatoes seep out. You may need to stir occasionally, but for the most part you can literally walk away from the stove! After 40 minutes or so, add the rest of the ingredients and serve with your favorite pasta, make a flat bread out of it, put it on a panini...you're limited only by your imagination! Whatever you do, make sure you add some cheeeessseee!

Now here's my recipe. It's a little more complicated. Mine's inspired by a recipe we got in Italy. Now obviously NOTHING is as good as anything Italian...oh yeah, a little thing about me...I'm obsessed with Italy and anything Italian. So we went there for our honeymoon (duh), and one of our taxi drivers moonlighted (moonlit? lol) as a chef. He was this wild, crazy man, with wild, crazy hair....haha! He told us how they make tomato sauce in Italy. Now the tomatoes we get here in the States are nowhere close to what you find in Italy (see pic below), BUT fear not my friends, we will prevail! As long as you use good ingredients and cook with your heart, your final product will always be yummy!

I asked for some tomatoes and basil with my salad, and the waiter picked these RIGHT from the plant next to our table. THAT'S Italy for ya!

INGREDIENTS:

1 can of whole peeled tomatoes (San Marzano are usually the best ones to get)
3-4 cloves of garlic (whole)
1 TBSP olive oil, a little more for drizzling
1 3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/4 tsp sugar
3/4 tsp dried rosemary
Handful of fresh Basil leaves

We'll work with the tomatoes first. This is the trick Luigi taught us (our awesome taxi driver). Cut the tomato in half and take all the seeds out. Seeds are kind of frowned upon in a tomato sauce (as we were told), so we'll do as the Italians do. After you're done, the tomatoes should look like the picture below. When you're done, set them aside.

In a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil on medium heat. Add the garlic and rosemary (the rosemary is optional; I like the flavor so I always add it). Also, I like to use whole cloves of garlic because I can just toss them out later. When the garlic starts getting golden-brown in color, add the tomatoes. If you'd like your sauce to be a little runny, you can add the rest of the tomato juice from the can, which I did.
Turn the heat to low, and let the tomatoes cook. After about 10-15 minutes, take a potato masher, and mash the crap out of those tomatoes! Mash them until you feel like you just went to the gym, and the sauce actually looks like a sauce. Cook uncovered for about 30 more minutes.

Now add the salt, pepper, sugar (yes, sugar!), maybe a little crushed pepper if you want the sauce to be spicy. The basil, you can either add whole leaves, or chop/chiffonade it and add it to the sauce. Stir it up, drizzle with olive oil, and you're done! I made pasta out of it last night, and added some mushrooms and cubes of fresh mozzarella cheese. Hmmmm yummy in my tummy!!

Ok I'm hungry now. That's it for now! I will be trying chocolate chip cookies today, I'll let you know how they worked out! Until then, toodles!