I’m a big fan of red sauce. I wish I could have good red sauce all year round. I also didn’t want to make Red Sauce out of pre-blended canned sauced tomatoes.

Like so many other things I end up trying to make, I found this recipe on an episode of Good Eats. I liked the premise of the episode, namely that tomatoes should be enjoyed fresh at the peak of their growing season when they can be bought locally, and canned throughout the rest of the year.

The recipe for this sauce can be found here. Because I made it based off of fresh tomatoes, I also referenced another good eats episode, which can be found here. Both share a similar premise, namely that using the application of dry heat from the oven/broiler intensifies flavors in the tomatoes. Both also rely upon a late application of alcohol in the form of dry white wine to release alcohol soluble flavors from the tomatoes.

I really liked this sauce. I used it in a variety of applications throughout the following weeks, including on eggplant pasta, as pizza sauce, and in Shrimp Fra Diavolo. I would, however, note that I think the basic recipe is a bit sweet to my tastes, likely due either to the sugar or wine that was added to the sauce. In the future, I’ll be experimenting with adding less sugar and using a drier white wine (I used chardonnay this time, will likely use something like sauvignon blanc on the next attempt).