Sauce Chronicles, First Attempt

Mike's dad makes the most amazing pasta sauce (or gravy, if you prefer). He makes it every Sunday. He starts the sauce early in the morning and lets it simmer all day long. He learned how to make this sauce from watching his grandmother make it. There is no recipe here folks!

In an attempt to preserve the heritage of the sauce, I have taken it upon myself to try to figure out how to duplicate its tomatoey awesomeness.

And okay technically this was my third attempt at making the sauce, but it is just too confusing to start a series of posts and call the first one the third attempt, so here we are.

The first time I used San Marzano tomatoes, which I prefer for pasta sauces in general because they have a nice, clean, bright flavor. But for some reason, they just didn't work for "the" sauce. Then last week I used a can of tomatoes that already had basil in them because I just wasn't paying enough attention in the grocery store. Fail!

So today it was back to the drawing board.  Here is today's attempt at the sauce.

And this week I added on to the challenge.

I made meatballs.  I did make a quick call to my sauce advisor to make sure I had everything I needed for the meatballs, and picked up some precious sauce making tips along the way.  Here is the sauce with the meatballs!

I'm think this version turned out to be 50% successful.  The sauce was very close, but was not quite right.  The meatballs, however, were perfect!

Next Sunday, I will try again!