Venison Goulash with Handmade Whole Wheat Noodles

We recently traded some of our canned goods with a neighbor for a load of venison killed on a farm in downstate Virginia. Most of the package consisted of two entire rump sections of the animal. I spent the better part of an afternoon removing silver skin and cutting stew meat.

Most of that went into the freezer for another day but I was anxious to try it. As anyone who's tasted venison can tell you (my wife would be happy to share a few thoughts on the subject) venison is extremely lean. That can be a good thing if you are trying to cut down on fat. But it does leave the meat dry. It needs to be well sauced.

I went looking for a different sort of venison stew recipe and adapted a "goulash" or "Gulgas di Capriolo" published by Mario Batali. Mario and I share a taste for rustic treatments. Besides the usual herbs and aromatics, this one calls for cinnamon and cloves. A generous scoop of sour cream is stirred into the pot at the last minute.

To accompany the meat my daughter and I rolled out some wide, whole-wheat noodles. My wife thought the meat was still a bit dry and not up to the beef chuck she loves so much. (Keep in mind, she's preoccupied with her concern over prions in the venison.) Well, there's no arguing with the fact that venison is lean. But the noodles did lap up the sauce very nicely. Wash it down with your favorite bottle of red wine.

For the goulash:

2 pounds venison shoulder, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 carrot, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 ribs celery, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 onion, cut into 1/2-inch dice
cheesecloth
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 sprig fresh thyme
3 sage leaves
3 cloves garlic
3 peppercorns
3 juniper berries
2/3 bottle dry red wine
1/4 cup lard
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 ounces speck or thick bacon, cut into 1/4-inch dice
3/4 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley
Grated Montasio or Romano cheese, for garnish

In a bowl, mix venison, carrot, celery and onion. Make a spice sachet by tying in cheesecloth the rosemary, thyme, sage, garlic, peppercorns and juniper berries. Bury the spice sachet in the meat and cover everything with the red wine. Place bowl in the refrigerator, covered, for 24 hours.

When meat has fully marinated, remove each piece from the liquid and dry thoroughly with paper towels. Season meat generously with salt and pepper, reserving the marinade. Melt the lard in a heavy skillet over moderately high heat and brown the venison pieces in batches, setting the venison aside on a plate.

While pot is still hot, brown the speck or bacon. Reduce heat and add flour. Stir to incorporate all the fat and cook a minute or two. Pour the marinade and all its contents into the pot. Bring to a boil and stir in cinnamon and cloves. Scrape any brown bits off the bottom of the pot. Cook a minute or two until the liquid has thickened, then add the meat. Reduce heat to low setting, cover and simmer until the meat is completely tender, about 1 1/2 hours.

Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the sour cream just before serving.

For the noodles:

Mix 1 cup all-purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour in a mound on a clean work surface. Make a well in the mound and add two eggs. Break up the eggs with a fork and gradually incorporate the flour into the eggs, working around the edges of the well. When the eggs and flour have mixed, push the dough into a rough ball and knead for several minutes. The dough may be a bit tough, owing to the whole wheat flour. You may have to press it hard into the work surface with the heel of your hand.

When the dough is holding together, divide the ball into quarters. Take one quarter portion dough and roll it through your pasta machine at the lowest setting at least a dozen times to continue the kneading process. Begin increasing the setting of the rollers up to number 6 or 7, depending on your desired thickness. You should have a fairly long piece of pasta. Cut it into three or four lengths and dust each with all-purpose flour. Roll up each piece into a cigar shape and, using a very sharp knife, cut into 1-inch pieces. Each piece will unroll into a noodle. Place these on a baking sheet while you continue to roll out and cut the other portions of dough.

When the noodles are done, drop them into a big pot of boiling, salted water. They will cook in about two minutes. You should have enough for at least six portions. Use tongs to divide the pasta into warm bowls. Spoon goulash with plenty of sauce over the noodles. Garnish with grated cheese and parsley.

Top photo by Leila Bruske

Penne with Leeks & Roasted Cauliflower

Don't look now, but I think I detect the flavors of fall creeping into the menu.

I like simple pasta dishes. The whole wheat varieties have arrived at a point where you no longer have to fear they'll have the flavor and texture of cardboard. They really are extremely good. I also like robust flavors and between the roasted cauliflower and the leeks, this dish has plenty.

While the pasta is cooking in a large pot of salted water, break a whole head of cauliflower into florets and toss them in a bowl with extra-virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and any of your other favorite seasonings--I use a shake of garlic salt and onion powder. Spread the cauliflower on a baking sheet and roast it in a 450-degree oven, turning once until the cauliflower has browned here and there and is just barely done.

Meanwhile, in a big iron skillet or saute pan, gently cook a medium-sized leek, cleaned and cut into bite-size pieces, in a tablespoon or two of extra-virgin olive oil. Season with salt to bring out the juices. I prefer to cook this covered just to speed things along.

When the leek is soft, add the cauliflower, a handful of cherry tomatoes sliced in half and a generous splash of white vermouth or white wine. Cover and cook a couple of minutes longer until the cauliflower is soft. Drain the cooked pasta and stir it into the skillet. Dress with some more olive oil, if desired, and adjust the seasoning.

I made this as a side dish, but I could easily see it served all on its own with a crisp glass of white wine to celebrate the changing of the seasons.

KIds Can Tomatoes

We are overwhelmed with Roma tomatoes from our garden. Perhaps this is a good time to teach the kids in my "food appreciation" classes a thing or two about canning.

First job is to blanch the tomatoes in a big pot of boiling water for about 20 seconds (15 seconds is about the minimum). Chill them quickly in a bowl of cold water. As soon as they are cool enough to handle, you can start peeling away the skins.


Blanching loosens the skins. I teach the kids to make a small cut at the pointy end of the tomato, then pull the skin away in strips with the aid of their trusty plastic knives.

Once the skins are completely removed, we cut the tomatoes into quarters lengthwise, then cut the quarters into small small pieces or dice. The dice then go into a pot to be boiled for a few minutes. Ten or 12 will fill a one-pint jar. I show the kids how to ladle the tomatoes into a sterilized canning jar, add 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon salt before screwing on the lid and processing the jar in a boiling water bath for 35 minutes.

But we also want something to snack on as a reward for all that tomato prep. So we peeled some more tomatoes and turned them into an easy pasta sauce with some sauteed onions and finely grated Parmesan cheese. A sauce of tomatoes fresh from the garden delivers uncommon flavor. The kids quickly wolfed it down.

Pasta with Kale

On a recent visit to One Star Farm in Baltimore County I picked up this suggestion from owner Joan Norman for using kale: cook the kale in the pasta pot with the pasta. When the pasta is done, Joan said, so is the kale.

We have a couple of gorgeous Tuscan kale plants in our garden begging to be used. The leaves have great flavor, but they do cook a while before they are tender. So I applied Joan's suggested method to whole wheat pasta and you see the results here: Tuscan kale with whole wheat rotini and fresh goat cheese.

Prepare the kale as usual, stripping the leafy part away from the stem. Roll the leaves together and chop into a chiffonade. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the pasta (1 pound for six large adult servings) plus chiffonade from several kale leaves. When the pasta is done, drain, plate and garnish with goat cheese and freshly ground black pepper.

(The other side in the photo is our go-to smothered okra. We are harvesting lots of okra these days and making lots of smothered okra.)

Peas with Pasta and Cream

If you have any concerns about your arteries or your waistline, you should probably avert your eyes. This is one of those dishes that can't be made any other way except with the best cream you can find and plenty of pecorino cheese.

That's the excuse I give myself when I want to make a meal out of the peas we've just harvested in the garden. The peas love to nestle in pasta shells such as these large elbows, or chiocciole. Rottini pasta would work as well.

Preparation is simple. Sweat 1/4 onion, diced small, in a heavy saute pan or skillet with olive oil. Season the onion with salt to draw out the liquid. When the onions are soft, after about 8 minutes, pour in 1 cup heavy cream, in this case the deliciously thick cream we get delivered from South Mountain Creamery. When the cream starts to bubble, lower the heat so that the cream continues to simmer.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add 1/2-pound pasta. While the pasta is cooking, the cream should thicken to a sauce-like consistency. Add 2/3-cup shelled peas to the sauce and cook just a minute or so, until the peas are softened to your taste. Season with a pinch of salt.

When the pasta is al dente, remove it from the pot, drain it well and toss it into the skillet with the cream sauce and peas. Stir in a liberal grating of pecorino cheese. Serve immediately in warm, shallow bowls.

Whole Wheat Pasta with Lentils, Leeks & Spinach

Do you remember when whole wheat pasta tasted like cardboard? It's much improved these days. In fact, where dried pasta is concerned, I prefer whole wheat for texture and flavor. Plus I know I am getting the extra fiber and nutrients that are lost in refined pasta.

Add the meaty flavor and fullness of lentils and you have a complete meal, as far as I'm concerned. Leeks and spinach add a nice touch of spring.

I admit my method for making this dish is a bit unconventional, especially where the lentils are concerned. I am not exact about quantities. I cook the lentils and pasta separately, of course, then add them together in a bowl at the end using just enough of each until it looks right. Sometimes I end up with leftover lentils, which is not such a bad thing. I might just eat them for breakfast the next day.

Start by cooking 1 cup of French Puy lentils with a clove of garlic and a bay leaf in a saucepan, covered with water to a depth of 1 inch. Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, until the lentils are tender, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, trim and clean a large leek. I like to whittle away the tough green leaves until the top of the leak looks like a pencil, then split the leek in half lengthwise from a point about 1/2 inch from the root end. This allows you to get underneath the leaves and remove any dirt or grit with running water. Slice the leek thinly and place it in a heavy skillet over moderate heat with about 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil. Stir in 1 garlic clove, finely chopped, about 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves and season with 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt to draw out the liquids.

At this point I cover the skillet to speed the cooking and retain the liquid. When the leek is soft add a big fistful or two of baby spinach leaves, about 4 ounces.. Continue cooking, uncovered, until the spinach is completely wilted. Remove from heat and set aside.

For the pasta I use large elbows, or chiocciole. Cook 8 ounces in salted water. When done, drain and toss in a bowl with the cooked vegetables and the lentils. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Give it a final splash of extra-virgin olive oil and serve.

I find this dish just as good at room temperature, meaning there's no need to panic if all of the ingredients don't come off the stove top piping hot at the same time.

Dark Days: Ghitarra Pasta with Pesto

We had so much fun making pasta on the ghitarra at school that I decided to try it at home. Daughter was happy to help. We took turns rolling the dough through the pasta machine, then pressing it through the ghitarra.

We keep a big Ziploc bag of pesto cubes in the freezer that we don't use nearly enough. At the end of the summer season we harvest all of our basil (usually much more than we really need) and turn it into pesto sauce with plenty of garlic and pine nuts. Then we freeze the pesto in ice cube trays for storage.

My pasta recipe--half all-purpose flour and half whole wheat, and three eggs from our farmer friend Brett--makes at least twice as many noodles as we can possibly eat in one sitting. So when our friend Shelley called to check about Easter plans we immediately invited her and husband John for a casual, impromptu dinner.

The pasta pot was ready to boil when they arrived. As cocktails were winding down, I dropped the noodles in the salted water to cook for just a few minutes, then tossed them in a bowl with about four cubes of defrosted pesto and a little of the cooking water.

Our CSA box arrived on Thursday with a bag of salad mix. It was a perfect way to finish our simple meal, but I had to add something besides my own vinaigrette. The answer was shouting at me from the herb garden: rosemary blossoms.

One of our rosemary plants is in a riot of bloom at the moment. We've never seen anything quite like it--hundreds of tiny, bluish blossoms that on close inspection are quite intricate in their architecture. I gathered a few dozen and sprinkled them over our salad. They do have a faintly rosemary flavor, something to nudge us gently into the new season.

Kids Make Spaghetti alla Chitarra

Chitarra not only means "guitar" in Italian but also refers to this ancient device for making pasta. It looks like the guts from a piano with thin wires strung from one end to the other. But instead of making music it turns a sheet of pasta into delectable, chewy noodles.

Lay the raw pasta dough over the wires and then press, perhaps with a rolling pin. When the dough can be pressed no further--when the wires become perfectly visible through the noodle and the pasta seems to be suspended in mid-air--you strum your fingers across the wires and the noodles fall gently into a tray at the bottom of the Chitarra. They look like squared-off spaghetti.

I bought my chitarra about a year ago and have been saving it for just the right moment. Kids love working with kitchen tools. So this lesson was a double treat, because they also got to process the pasta dough in my manual pasta machine.

Eventually the class divided into teams, with one side rolling the dough into sheets, the other pressing it through the chitarra. Then they switched so everyone could have a turn on both devices. Having a hand in the process made the finished pasta all the more delicious. We dressed it very simply, tossing the cooked noodles in garlic and extra-virgin olive oil, then dusting with Parmesan cheese.

To make enough pasta alla chitarra for six persons, first put a big pot of heavily salted water on the stove to boil. Add enough salt so that the water tastes like it came from the sea.

Next, peel and finely chop four cloves of garlic and drop them into a heavy skillet with 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil. Cook the garlic over low heat until it is golden brown but not burned.

While these things are happening on the stove, you can start your pasta dough. We use the classic bench method--a very casual approach--for making our dough. On a clean counter top or table top, mix 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat floor. Add about 1/2 teaspoon salt, then draw the flour into a mound with your hands and make a deep well in the middle. Crack three eggs and drop them into the well. Beat these with a fork, then add 1/4 cup water. (If the liquid wants to escape, make your well deeper, like the inside of a volcano.)

Using a fork, begin to stir the flour into the liquid around the inside edges of the well, gradually incorporating more and more of the flour into the liquid. When the dry and liquid ingredients have been roughly mixed, start pushing them into a ball with your hands. (If the ball is too sticky, add a little more all-purpose flour.) Knead the dough for a minute or two, then divide it into three approximately equal parts. If some dough sticks to the work surface, scrape it up using a pastry scraper or a spatula.

Continue kneading each piece of dough separately by pressing it through the pasta machine at the lowest setting numerous times, folding the dough over onto itself after it comes out of the machine, then rolling it again. Continue until the dough is soft and somewhat elastic. Now roll the dough through the machine at settings two, three and four. Your original dough will become a sheet of pasta--progressively longer and thinner as the settings increase and the machine's rollers narrow--until it has the thickness of conventional spaghetti.

Dust the sheet of dough with flour and cut it into two pieces. To make the finished noodles, lay one piece of dough lengthwise over the strings of the chitarra. Work a rolling pin over the dough, pressing firmly back and forth until the wires have cut completely through to the surface of the dough. Now strum the end of your thumb across the wires as you would a musical instrument until all of the noodles have fallen into the tray at the bottom of the device. Remove the noodles, place on a plate or baking sheet and dust with flour to prevent sticking.

Repeat this process until all three of the original pieces of pasta dough have been turned into noodles.

To cook the noodles, I brought my aluminum pasta pot, which has a drop-in strainer. When the water is boiling, drop in the noodles. They won't take very long to cook--much less time than dry, store-bought noodles--so taste after a minute or two. Strain the noodles but do not rinse (the starch on the noodles helps the sauce to adhere). Now toss with the olive oil and garlic, either in your skillet or in a separate bowl. Divide the noodles onto plates and dust liberally with grated Parmesan cheese.

Trust me, you will not have to worry about leftovers.

Note: In the event you do not have a chitarra, you can make noodles by rolling your sheets of pasta into logs and cutting with a sharp knife. Just make sure the pasta sheets are thoroughly dusted with flour to prevent sticking.

Kids Make Real Mac & Cheese

The kids in my "food appreciation" classes concluded their recent exploration of nutrition labeling with a comparison of macaroni and cheese.

The macaroni and cheese that comes in the little blue box from Kraft may be one of the most popular processed foods of all times. We know some college students who eat little else during their four-year studies.

But what, exactly, is in those playful orange noodles? And how would they compare with a dish made from scratch with real cheese, real milk, real pasta?

This exercise presents some interesting choices because the "real" version of macaroni and cheese actually contains more calories and fat per serving than the processed kind. In this case, Kraft's "Premium Three Cheese" product lists 360 calories per 1-cup serving, 130 from fat. There's 2.5 grams of total fat, one gram of which is saturated fat.

Meanwhile, our home-made dish, made according to our favorite recipe from Martha Stewart, has a whopping 590 calories per serving, 296 of them from fat. Martha's version contains 33 grams of fat, 23 grams saturated, and all of 102 milligrams of cholesterol, compared to 5 milligrams in the Kraft product.

Where do all these calories, the fat, the cholesterol, come from? It took a bit of research to answer that question, because our Martha Stewart macaroni and cheese is made with artisan cheeses from Whole Foods, and these do not come with "nutrition facts" labeling the way processed foods do.

Still, I made sure my handout for the kids listed the nutrition information for all the ingredients in our home-made macaroni and cheese so they could see clearly that the cheeses--lots of cheddar, and a lesser amount of Emmentaler--are dense with calories and fat. There's also butter in there, bread crumbs. The macaroni itself, though fat free, is rich with calories.

What's a body to do? We turned to the ingredient list. In the case of Kraft, it reads like a science experiment with "modified food starch" and "sodium tryployphosphate" and "cellulose gum" and at least two artificial yellow dyes to give the noodles that trademark orange glow.

Our Martha Stewart noodles, meanwhile, consist of just eight easily-recognized ingredients. It's "real" food, compared to stuff that's cooked up by food scientists.

And one other thing. Take a look at the sodium content. Processed foods, it turns out, are extremely high in sodium as a general rule and so is Kraft macaroni and cheese: 610 milligrams in each one-cup serving, or 32 percent of the daily requirement for a 2,000-calorie diet. Our made-from-scratch noodles have just 179 milligrams.

The lesson from all this? It's not enough just to look at calories and fat. Would that the world were so easy. Other ingredients matter. Dyes and additives matter. And so does serving size. When our macaroni and cheese emerged from the oven and we started to dish it out, we found that one cup was actually a huge portion. Even a half-cup was too much for a child-sized plate. We doled out 1/3-cup portions that seemed just right.


If you really like something but it has lots of calories and fat, I told the kids, that doesn't necessarily mean you should never eat it. Just don't eat it so often. Take a smaller serving. Just know what you're eating. It's about balance.

And, oh, was it good. There was enough left over for some of the teachers. By the second day of our lessons, word seemed to have spread through the entire school. The teachers were lined up with their plates and forks, begging for some of our home-made macaroni and cheese.

The foundation of this dish is a bechamel sauce made in the traditional way with butter, flour and milk. Grated cheese is added to the sauce and melted smooth. After seasoning the sauce with salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne, add cooked macaroni--we used a jumbo elbow noodle called chiocciole in Italian--and pour the mix into a casserole dish. The noodles are topped with buttered bread crumbs and baked until golden and bubbly in a 375-degree oven. You can find the complete recipe here, at Martha Stewart's website.

Dark Days: Meat Grinder Pasta with Pork Ragu

Armed with my new meat grinder, I've been anxious to try this trick I first saw performed by Mario Batali: extruding whole-wheat pasta.

The sauce was a simple pork ragu made with ground pork ($8 for a little more than one pound at the farmers market), diced onions, diced carrots and, in the absence of our own canned tomatoes, a prepared tomato sauce from the farmers market.

As it turned out, the pint jar of sauce I purchased ($4) was only half what I needed. Enter one large can of Cento tomatoes.

What you see on the right in this picture is Hubbard squash ($4 at the farmers market), roasted then mashed with brown sugar, allspice and nutmeg. Quite delicious and a very generous quantity.

Again, I felt a bit stung by the price of the ground pork. By my wife was quick to point out that it made perhaps two quarts of sauce. We'll be freezing some, or eating it for quite a few days to come.

The pasta noodles were another story. The dough is simple enough: 2 cups white whole wheat flour with two eggs, kneaded for about five minutes. My first attempt came out more like spaetzle. I'd forgotten that you need to remove the blade from the grinder. On the next go-round, I removed the blade and increased the size of the die in the grinder. The noodles came out looking like alien space worms only chewier. What I need is a die sized somewhere between the two choices that came with the machine, or around 1/4-inch.

But I was pleased to see daughter gobbling up the whole-wheat pasta (the spaetzle kind) with the pork ragu. "These carrots are delicious," said the little girl who hates cooked carrots. But wait--it's not all cooked carrots she hates, just the big slices that we make as a side dish.

Carrots, apparently, are very complicated.

Dark Days: Turkey Tetrazzini

I am embarrassed to say how long this meal has been in the planning. But our leftover turkey from Thanksgiving has bounced from the fridge to the freezer and back again. Our CSA (local farm) delivery has been on haitus and I did not want to make the noodles for the tetrazzini without our local eggs.

Do I sound desperate, or what?

What it is, I think, is just guilt over the fact that I have not been able to source all of the ingredients for our food locally. Call it lack of preparation, lack of spunk, or just a beginner's floundering around. The turkey in this dish is the dark meat from the last drumstick and wing that I have been so carefully hoarding. The pasta is made with local eggs but King Arthur flour. The salad is from our garden, dressed with a honey-mustard vinaigrette from standard pantry items. (I'd even been saving the salad greens for this occasion--the weather has been so fluky, I wasn't sure we'd have any left in the garden to pick otherwise.)

Yesterday our CSA deliveries finally resumed. So when I arrived home from teaching my "food appreciation" classes in the evening, my daughter and I set to work making the pasta. It's a two-egg affair with a 50/50 mix of all-purpose flour and white whole wheat flour. I gave the dough a quick knead on the countertop, then fed it into our pasta machine while my daughter cranked. Turns out we make a great pasta making team and it's so easy, I wonder sometimes why we bother buying prepared pasta. We rolled the dough up to the next-to-last setting, resulting in a sturdy noodle once it was cut into linguine.

The golden, almost orange hue of the pastured egg yolks give the pasta a rich depth of color, while the addition of whole wheat flour produces a very satisfying chew.

The pasta is cooked in a big pot of salted water just to the al dente stage, then quickly drained and rinsed in cold water to arrest the cooking. Meanwhile, we sauteed onion and mushrooms and mixed these with frozen peas in a veloute sauce--a roux of butter and flour blended as for a gravy with homemade turkey stock and finished with a bit of heavy cream.

Layer the pasta and sauce in a greased casserole (a small square, in this case), dust with bread crumbs and bake in a 375-degree oven until the bread crumbs are golden brown and the sauce is bubbling. Scoop onto plates with the salad and serve.

(Note: for an even richer Tetrazzini sauce, try adding a tempered egg yolk and some Marsala wine.)

Accidental Pasta Sauce

When I planted our tomatoes this year it was a very ambitious project, first starting the seeds in flats, tending the seedlings, then carefully transplanting them into the garden with lots of compost to munch on, then surrounding them with big, heavy wire cages to grow in.

I had exactly three different varieties of tomatoes--Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, and a hybrid yellow cherry tomato--and was perfectly content to wait for the fruits to follow. But one of the great joys of gardening and growing your own food is you never know when something completely unexpected might happen. In this case, one of the tomato plants I knew for a fact to be a Brandywine or a Cherokee Purple turned out to be some kind of plum tomato, perhaps even the coveted Marzano variety.

I can only speculate on how this might have occurred. Since this particular plant was grown in a flat and transplanted, it could not have been one of the many volunteers that pop up in the garden from time to time. And since all of the plants in my flats were grown from seeds that I purchased in seeds packets, it must have come from one of those seed packets. Which leads me to conclude that somehow at the seed company a seed from a plum tomato somehow made its way into a packet intended for Brandywine or Cherokee Purple seeds only.

Now that I think about it, I kind of enjoy the idea that seeds from different tomato varieties are intermingling at the seed company, perhaps not in great quantity, perhaps just one-in-a-thousand, but just enough accidentally to cause some totally unexpected results and delightful surprises on the consumer end. The lesson: tomato seeds are indomitable and Nature always wins out.

Anyway, it was my luck to have this accidental plum tomato growing in one of my cages and what a plant it has been--bigger and bushier than any of my other tomatoes, far exceeding the five-foot height of its cage. The first tomato to ripen unfortunately was not used simply because one tomato does not a sauce make, and I have plenty of other tomatoes for slicing. But recently I began monitoring a veritable crop of plum tomatoes growing larger and larger and ripening in perfect unison.

Yesterday I picked them all intent on making a sauce. Some of these plums were extremely large and most of them were cracked and gnarly the way home-grown tomatoes are, unlike those perfect specimens you see in the grocery.

The first thing to do to make a sauce is put a large pot of water to boil and remove the tomato skins. When the water is boiling, reduce the heat a little and lower the tomatoes into the water one-at-a-time each for 30 seconds only. This will loosen the skins so they can be easily peeled away. Remove the tomatoes from the water with a slotted spoon and place them in a colander in the kitchen sink to cool.

While the tomatoes are cooling, start a medium onion, diced small, to cooking gently in some extra-virgin olive oil in a heavy pot. Season with salt to draw the moisture out. While the onion is cooking, peel the tomatoes, then cut them in half and squeeze out the seeds. Place the tomatoes in a large bowl for the most fun part, which is squeezing and smushing the tomatoes with your hands until they are just a rough pulp.

After the onions have been cooking five minutes or so, toss in two finely-chopped cloves are garlic. Continue cooking until the onions are tender, about eight minutes total. Now add the tomato pulp and season with course salt, freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of red pepper flakes. I also added a tablespoon of chopped oregano from the garden. But I hasten to say that I think oregano is one of those herbs more flavorful and more useful dried. It's up to you. (You could just as easily cook the sauce however you are used to at this point. You don't have to follow my directions.)

I also poured a bit of red wine into the pot, as the flavor compounds in tomatoes are soluble in alcohol.

The uncooked sauce is a good deal soupier than what I normally see when using canned plum tomatoes. And I suppose that's simply because the fresh tomatoes contain much more juice that those that have been cooked ahead and preserved in a can. So just bring the sauce up to a boil, reduce the heat and let it bubble away until it is reduced to your liking. Be prepared for this to take 45 minutes.

I started with six large plum tomatoes and in the end had a little less than two cups of sauce. But what a sauce. I don't think words adequately convey the difference between a fresh tomato sauce made with home-grown plum tomatoes and anything you can buy in a store. The flavors are incredibly clear and bright and intense--an entirely different class of tomato sauce and a great reward for all the effort that went into growing the tomatoes, even if they were accidental.

I mixed our sauce with some whole-wheat penne pastta topped with some torn basil leaves and a really healthy dusting of Parmigan cheese. Do enjoy this with some of the red wine you opened to make the sauce.