It was fun chatting, as usual, this morning, with Matt Swaim on the Sonrise Morning Show/Sacred Heart radio about foods eaten during Biblical times.

After the heavy eating of the holidays, we’re going with simple. And I mean simple. This sauce recipe from famed Marcella Hazan for pasta uses 4 main ingredients: butter, onions, salt and, of course, tomatoes. Now the butter, onions and salt are all foods mentioned in the Bible and were eaten as part of the common diet. Butter is analogous to the “curds” mentioned in the Bible. Onions were part of the foods the Israelites missed from Egypt when wandering in the wilderness. Salt is mentioned frequently – and sea salt is still a most popular salt today.

Anyway, here’s the recipe and I hope you try it. High quality, whole Italian tomatoes (the best are grown and packed in Italy), along with good butter, a large knob of onion, some salt and you’re good to go. Not even 5 minutes prep.

Marcella’s Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

1 can, 28 oz, high quality whole Italian tomatoes packed in puree or juice

1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half

Salt to taste (and pepper, too)

Parmesan for garnish

Instructions

Easy peasy.  Put tomatoes, onion and butter in a pan. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer and cook, stirring and crushing the tomatoes lightly with the back of a spoon occasionally, for about 45 minutes. I leave mine uncovered.

Remove and discard the onion. Or leave it in like me.

Serve over hot pasta with grated Parmesan cheese. Makes enough for 12 -16 oz. of pasta. We use 12 oz since we like a lot of sauce.

Sauce freezes well.