Making Sauce by Can

Friday we made tomato sauce. One of the five leading sauces. This isn't like the tomato sauce my mom made. She browned a 7 bone roast and threw in pork chop or two. My mom was Italian and always said, "you browned the meat until there was no more liquid in the pot." And, to the best I can remember, maybe used canned tomato paste, just a spoonful, plus canned tomatoes and tomato sauce from Hunt's, usually. And, cooked it for an eternity. People raved about my moms tomato sauce. We called it spaghetti sauce.

The classic Tomato Sauce is a bit different. We render some salt pork, add a mira poix of onion and carrot, dice up canned tomatoes, add canned tomato puree, add pork neck bones, sachet of garlic, peppercorns, bay leaf and thyme, bring it to a simmer and stir it once in a while for 1 to 2 hours. Put it through a food mill, then season with salt and sugar. We only had an hour, so that's where it ended. Mine needed more sugar. The salt was good.

So you might be asking yourself, what's the difference between the two? Well, it's not what's different so much, Le Cordon Bleu uses canned tomatoes!

Who knew my mom was so classical in her tomato sauce making?