Tomato sauce so simple you'll die

Name: Tomato sauce so simple you'll die
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 1 × 28 oz can whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes, with their juices; 5 tbsp butter; 1 onion, peeled and halved; 1 × 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes, with their juices (not Marcella's, ours, and it goes in at the very end); salt

Marcella's three ingredients, one of which you bin, and a fourth she never sanctioned.

At a Glance

Time

1 hr

Serves

Story

No soffritto, no garlic, no browning, no herbs, and somehow it eats like a Sunday that took all day. The butter is the whole conjuring trick, melting down into the tomatoes until the sauce turns improbably silky, so pay no mind to anyone who tells you to trim it back. And treat the onion as a guest rather than a component. It lends the pot its sweetness while it softens, then gets shown the door before serving, having charmed the room and eaten nothing.

Ingredients

1 × 28 oz can whole peeled San Marzano tomatoeswith their juices
5 tbsp butter
1 onionpeeled and halved
1 × 14.5 oz can diced tomatoeswith their juices (not Marcella's, ours, and it goes in at the very end)
salt

Method

It looks like almost nothing written down, and tastes like something you would gladly pay for in Bologna. Makes enough to dress a pound of pasta. The house version adds a second can of tomatoes at the death, which Marcella did not ask for and which I am not sorry about.

Tip the tomatoes and all their juices into a saucepan. Add the butter and drop in the two onion halves, cut side down. A pinch or two of salt.
Set it over medium heat and bring it to a simmer. Now leave it mostly alone for about 45 minutes, uncovered, giving it a stir now and then and crushing any stubborn tomatoes against the side of the pan with the back of your spoon. It will thicken and the butter will pull the whole thing into one glossy sauce.
Here is where we part company with Marcella. Tip in the can of diced tomatoes, juices and all, and let it cook down 5 minutes more. Three quarters of an hour of simmering builds a deep, sweet, faintly jammy sauce and quietly drives off everything that tasted raw and bright at the start. The second can puts that back, with enough body already underneath it that nothing goes thin. You end up with two tomatoes in one pot: one cooked to sweetness, one barely cooked at all.
Fish out and discard the onion. Taste for salt, correct it and toss with hot pasta. That is the entire recipe, and you will make it for the rest of your life.

Save the spent onion halves if you like, they are soft and sweet and rather good pushed onto toast, though nobody will judge you for binning them as directed.

On the pass