Tomato Cream Sauce For Everything Italian

I ate amazing mushroom lasagna at a restaurant recently.  What made the lasagna absolutely heavenly was the sauce – thick, orange, creamy and oh so rich. So it was obvious for me to enquire there as to what was the secret of that delicious sauce. The answer that I got was very generic – “it is half red sauce and half white sauce.” Well this answer didn’t answer anything at all (why are restaurants so possessive about their recipes?).

Unperturbed I decided to recreate that sauce at home. I didn’t want to try making orange sauce by mixing red and white sauce because, firstly, I felt that would be very time consuming. And secondly, it has been only once that I tried making white sauce and it turned out to be a big blunder. Since then I don’t even entertain the thought of making white sauce. I wanted a recipe that was much easier and gave almost same results.

Then it hit me – tomato sauce with cream might do the trick. In Indian cooking, for making special dishes for special occasions, a tomato cream sauce is often used. This tomato cream sauce is super rich with generous doses of butter and heavy cream. What if I make the very same sauce, but instead of Indian spices, I use spices suitable for Italian cooking.

So my experiment started. And the result I got was perfect. Try it for yourself.

You Would Need

2 tbsp olive oil

4 tbsp butter

1 big onion – diced

6-7 garlic cloves – minced

5 tomatoes – chopped

1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce

Few basil leaves (9-10) – chopped

 1 cup heavy cream

1 tbsp honey

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup Grated Parmesan or Romano

Specifications

Preparation time – 10 min

Cooking time – <30 min

Servings – 8

How to Go About It

Heat olive oil and butter in a pan together. Cooking butter with olive oil ensures that the butter doesn’t evaporate or burn quickly.

Add onion and garlic and saute them for a couple of minutes, till the onions loose a little color and become translucent.

Add in  chopped tomatoes and tomato sauce along with salt, pepper and honey.  I used both fresh tomatoes and tomato sauce so that I can get the chunkiness of tomatoes and rich color of the sauce. Cover and cook the sauce for around 20 minutes. Check to see that the raw taste of tomatoes and smell of tomato sauce has gone completely.

Add in basil and keep cooking for another 5 minutes. Do a taste check and see if you would require a little more salt or pepper.

Turn the stove off. Grind in a blender a little coarsely (do not puree).

Add in heavy cream and Parmesan to the sauce while stirring continuously.

Isn’t it super easy. Best is to use this sauce immediately – be it in lasagna or pasta or pizza or even for a lick. I used this sauce for a couple different recipes which I’ll be posting soon.