Becky’s Favorite Quick Marinara

Well, I forgot to post yesterday’s meals and points values…oh, well. Not the end of the world as I know it.

But, I did make a delicious marinara sauce out of basically nothing—meaning that I purchased nothing, and didn’t have marinara in mind when I set out to make my dinner. I just rummaged through my kitchen cabinets to see what I could find. This was mostly by necessity, as I had not yet gotten the weekly groceries and we had very little food in the house.

What I found was a can of delicious organic crushed tomatoes with basil. And then the wheels started turning. So, here is my marinara recipe, completely off the cuff and with very approximate measurements. That’s the beautiful thing about marinara—it’s very forgiving, and you can toss just about anything into it.

• 2 Tbs olive oil (or, as I measured it, two good glugs around the pot)
• 5 smallish garlic cloves, finely chopped
  
• 2 tsp dried onion flakes
• a tiny pinch dried red chili flakes
• most of a 28 oz can crushed tomatoes with basil (I used all but maybe 1/3 cup)
• 1 tsp sugar

Heat olive oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic cloves, dried onion, and chili flakes. The idea here is to cook the garlic so that it softens up a little, NOT so that it gets brown. If your garlic gets brown, toss it and start over. I promise you will be way more bummed about bitter, nasty marinara sauce than you will be about chopping 5 more cloves of garlic for a do-over.

So, anyway, cook your garlic so that it softens a little, and starts to smell fragrant, 2-3 minutes. Pour in the crushed tomatoes and reduce the heat to medium-low. Simmer with a lid on for about 10 minutes (or as long as it takes for your pasta to cook, if you’re making pasta). Just before serving, turn off the heat, remove the lid, and stir in the 1 tsp sugar. Taste, and add salt and pepper if needed. Also, if it is thicker than you like, save some of your nice, starchy pasta water and stir some into the sauce, a little at a time until the desired consistency is reached. The pasta water will add some flavor and seasoning, too. I ended up using a couple tablespoons of pasta water to get my sauce to the right texture. Serve over pasta, and enjoy with some crusty bread broiled for a few minutes with a drizzle of olive oil.

Note: if all you have are the regular crushed tomatoes, sans basil, use those and when you pour in the crushed tomatoes also add in 1 tsp or more (to your taste) of dried basil.