Kitchen Hack

The Go-To Tomato Sauce and its Infinite Variations

The weather, though still unseasonably warm, is getting colder up here in Minneapolis. When that happens I kinda like things that cook slow but are still relatively easy so long as they perfume the whole house. While a slow moving sauce simmers away I'll step away, run an errand, go shovel snow, whatever. When I walk back in the house, the fragrance is wonderful. It immediately conjures up home and family. It feels peaceful. 

I thought I'd share my go-to tomato sauce. I like this because it's got alot of flavors going on, a little heat (totally controllable by you) and it smells so damn good. Also, with minor variations it can go from a sauce to a ragu to a chunky vegetable sauce. What's cool about finding a sauce that has alot of variations you can go with is you can keep your pantry stocked with the ingredients below and you'll always have a good sauce at your fingertips. And then you can improvise off of that.

 I'll cover all those but we'll hit the foundation first. 

 

Cochinita Pibil Ravigote Breakfast Ragu

Yesterday, I spent most of the day cooking up some Cochinita Pibil. Never having done it before, I followed the recipe rather closely. Here's the thing with any dish that centers on a pork shoulder... it makes alot of food. Leftovers are gonna happen. I decided to go breakfast with it (meaning I put an egg on it and called it breakfast). 

Playing around with it, it seemed like it would make a good ragu. It already was broken down and with just a little heat it would break down further. Perfect ragu territory. Instead of a, for lack of a better term, regular pasta I thought couscous would be cool. Also, it was all I had in the pasta family laying around.