Getting Saucy

I once had a flatmate who ate the same meal for supper every single day: pasta with tomato sauce right out of the bottle, and some kind of frozen meat-food charred in more tomato sauce. The monotony of his diet was depressing to the rest of the household; every evening at seven the whole house would reek of scorched tomato sauce, and his shelf in our compact pantry was a solid line of identical red jars. It's like this guy thought of dinner as an inconvenient necessity, to be dealt with as easily and efficiently as possible.
I'd rather feel like I was treating myself and my friends, even when all I'm making is pasta and tomato sauce. And a basic homemade tomato sauce is simple to make, yet about nineteen times more satisfying than opening a bottle. Down with complacent reliance on bottled sauces!

Quick tomato/white wine sauce

Sort out your timing '“ you want the pasta and the sauce to be done at the same time, without stressing too much over one being under- or overcooked. The best way I've found is to chop up the veggies while waiting for the pasta water to boil. (And you can then put each chopped vegetable in a separate little glass bowl, and talk to yourself while you're cooking, and pretend you're the star of your own cooking show'“ This makes everything taste better). Start cooking the sauce right after you've dumped the pasta into the water. Everything will be done at the same time!
So start by (very finely) dicing three to five cloves of garlic, (kinda chunkily) chopping up one green pepper, (sloppily) slicing up six or so firm plum tomatoes, and adding enough pasta to feed two hungry people to a big pot of boiling water. Put a nice big slug of olive oil in a big pan, add the diced garlic, and start it cooking over a low/medium burner.
When the garlic starts to get a bit transparent, slosh in about three tablespoons of white wine. The best cooking wine to keep on hand is a bottle of dry vermouth. Store it in the kitchen, no one will be tempted to drink it and you'll always have cooking wine.
Add the green pepper to the pan and after a minute, the tomatoes, too. Sprinkle in some herbs. Fresh herbs are awesome, but if you haven't planned ahead and done your shopping, you should have shakers full of dried basil, oregano, and thyme around.
When the pasta's almost done, and the tomatoes are starting to go all mushy and saucy, ladle a bit of starchy, oily pasta water into the sauce.
When the pasta's nice and done, strain the water off, and add the pasta to the sauce. Stir the contents of the pan around for a minute, letting the sauce cook into the pasta. Serve it up, yo.

For an even more basic sauce, perfect for Monday night in front of the TV, you can cook up some pasta, dump it in a bowl, and stir in butter, parmesan, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

And, hey, if you're in a mood for more doing- without-pricey-bottled-goods, make your own salad dressing '“ there are so many easy ones. (Mayo + ketchup + sweet pickle relish = Thousand Island dressing. That's all there is to it.)

This dressing is lovely on a big, multi-veggie, meal-sized salad, one with leafy lettuce, cucumber, avocado, strawberries, and stuff like that:

1 cup olive oil
2-3 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar
2-3 tablespoons of orange or cranberry juice
a clove of minced garlic and some finely sliced red onion chopped, fresh mint. (Or a couple of tablespoons of dried mint.)
salt and pepper.

Put all the ingredients in a screwtop glass bottle. Cap the bottle tightly and shake it around until everything's well mixed and emulsified (This step is best when you've got some dancin' music playing). Let the dressing marinate itself in the fridge for at least half an hour, then give it one last, good shake and pour it over your salad. The dressing keeps well in the fridge, so you can make a double batch and have homemade dressing on demand for a week or two.

By Emily Zimmerman