Italian Sauces

Italian Recipes

While I was growing up, my mom would make THE BEST spaghetti ever! Or, I guess, amazing red Italian sauce. Just a few months ago, I stopped eating spaghetti with store-bought sauce. I would use some tomato paste, and start winging from there with seasonings. But then I started experimenting with what I felt was right. (I always say to my friends that cooking is like chemistry, just a lot safer.)

But as time has gone, I started adding things here and there to start making the sauce subtle yet delicious. I mixed two different types of canned tomatoes, seasoning, milk or cream instead of a light amount of water- it sounds disgusting, I know, but this is what this novice cook was dealing with. I had almost everything aligned and I thought I was starting to cook just as good as my mom- but something just wasn’t quite there. At first I thought maybe this was just because it was my mom’s cooking. It turned out that I was subconsciously remembering what she had told me when I was younger. When I last visited my parents, I turned out to be right. I was just one ingredient off from making her amazing sauce.

Friends and family are now really loving my cooking- especially my Italian dishes… What can I say? I love to host dinners. I have certainly come a long way since burning Costco brownies in the microwave, making chocolate chip puddles instead of cookies and making dry, horribly seasoned pork. Furthermore, my girlfriends have really wanted my secrets. So here are three easy recipes for Italian sauces: 

1. Spaghetti- Serves 2*
   • 1can of tomatoes paste
   • 1can of either diced or stewed tomatoes, very finely diced tomatoes would be best.
   • Some dashes of Italian Seasoning
   • Salt and Pepper, as desired. More pepper makes it yummy.
   • Less than a small table spoon of sugar. Or as desired, caution against overdosing on sugar of course.
   • Some milk, just to calm the tomato flavor, perhaps ½ cup.
   
   
   1. Add tomato paste and diced tomato into a pot.
   2. Add milk and turn heat to HIGH. Don't add a ton of milk, just enough to help it make the paste more like a sauce. You can also exchange the milk for CREAM! :)
   3. Basically melt and mix it up.
   4. Turn the heat down once it starts to kinda boil, else the milk will scorch.
   5. Start seasoning.
      
      
2. Alfredo Sauce, for a dish JUST for Alfredo sauce
   • Cream Cheese
   • 2-4 tablespoons of Butter (¼- ½ of the stick)
   • Milk or Cream
   • Seasoning of choice- Typically Italian Seasoning and S&P, But I have done a Lemon Garlic seasoning once and it turned out pretty good.
   
   
   1. Melt butter in a pot.
   2. Add the cream cheese.
   3. Add the milk or cream, start melting.
   4. Set the heat to Med and let is sit.
   5. Start stirring it until you have your desired consistency.
   
   
3. Ziti
   • NO CANNED DICED TOMATOES
   • Half as much cream cheese.
   • Same amount of milk or cream.
   • 1 can of tomato paste.
   • Same amount of butter.
1. Melt the butter, milk and tomato paste.
2. Once the heat is nicely boiling, add the cream cheese and stir until you have the right consistency.
3. Season as you like.

Additional: MAKE YOUR OWN GARLIC BREAD:

• Texas French Bread
• Butter, kinda melted. NOT TOTALLY MELTED
• Fresh garlic, like 2-3 smashed and chopped cloves.
• Parsley

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Spread on bread
3. Bake for about 5 minutes or until golden and toasty.