Spaghetti With French Sauce Tomate

The French are well known for their sauces and their skill in using them to enhance their dishes. Today we explore Sauce Tomate, one of the French Mother Sauces from Auguste Escoffier- the founder of modern cooking and eating.

Auguste Escoffier was a pioneer in French cuisine about 100 years ago. Our recipe below is modeled on his original recipe from the late 1800s. You are cooking a piece of history with modern touches!

Now, what is this mother sauce thing? A mother sauce is a sauce that can be used to enhance a dish in its original intended form. It can also be used to make other sauces. Just think of how many sauces and recipes call for tomato sauce!

Our recipe is significantly different than what you'd find in a store out of a jar. I will say that sauce from a glass jar generally tends to be better than a can. However, after you cook this recipe, it does not come close. Does it take a little bit of time? Yes. Are the steps complicated? No.

With summer arriving, it's prime time to get out into your gardens and plant some tomatoes for this recipe! The benefits and comparisons I can make between this sauce and a supermarket sauce are innumerable. I should warn you; that this sauce will make your house smell stunning. Forget a candle, whip up a batch of this sauce!

When you make this recipe, you can add meatballs or ground beef to make the meal a little heartier. I will say, though, that the sauce is lighter in texture. It has incredible flavor, but the sauce isn't as thick as you may be used to. But this is the perfect moment to think about what tomato sauce should be. Rather than drown your pasta in a thick sauce, try this lighter sauce and focus more on the flavors.

The French often eat smaller portions of food, but what they do consume is cooked to perfection with fantastic flavor profiles. Why not go for a smaller dish with a more flavorful sauce. This is the perfect recipe for it! Look at quality versus quantity of food. Pair this recipe with fresh bread, a salad, or another favorite dish. But don't just limit Sauce Tomate to just pasta; try it elsewhere as well!

Now for the science behind tomatoes. Once seen as a poisonous plant till the 19th century due to their relation to nightshade- an actual poisonous plant, the humble tomato first started as small berries in the South American desert. Despite its wrongful classification, the tomato was domesticated in Mexico and rose to be the second most popular vegetable in the U.S.

Tomatoes pair exceptionally well with meat, but why is that? They have a large amount of Glutamic acid and sulfur aromas that are similarly found in meat. But that's not all these vegetables offer in flavor—the sugars and acidity help to enhance their taste. Hence why we have bacon in this recipe.

The more time a tomato has on a vine, the more its flavor develops. Grocery stores often have their tomatoes picked green and are ripened chemically. In this case, they lack Furaneol- a chemical that gives off sweet and savory caramel flavor. This is why tomatoes grown in your backyard have so much more taste! If you're making this sauce from a can, I recommend looking at the ingredients to ensure calcium hasn't been added. This is often added to keep the cell walls of the tomato intact and in the end causing the sauce to less smooth.

And, of course, there are numerous health benefits to tomatoes. One of which being that it contains Tomatine. This binds to cholesterol, which reduces our bodies intake/ absorption it! Who knew!

We can't wait for you to try this recipe; it won't compare to store-bought sauces! Easy to make, makes your house smell amazing, and tastes even better; what's not to love.

Cheers,

Chef Olson

"The Flying Chef"

Chef notes: Pour the sauce over the pasta and mix till the pasta is covered. Finish with a slice of warm bread, parmesan and basil!