Pizza Sauce

Living here in the rural Philippines, there are some things that just don't seem to be available. One of them is a good commercial pizza. Back in Seattle, I had so many choices. Getting good pizza was as easy as picking up the phone or driving less than a mile.

Here, the pizzas are all lacking somehow. And, it's not for a lack of trying. One place has really great toppings, good sauce, but a crust that belongs in cardboard packaging. Another place has a good crust and adequate toppings, but just can't seem to put on enough sauce. One name-brand place (I'm leaving off the brand intentionally) puts ranch dressing on their all-meat pizzas (YUCK!). I've often wished they'd get together and make a good overall pizza.

Last night I just couldn't take it anymore. I wanted a decent pizza and I knew I wasn't going to be able to call up someone and just buy it. So, I hit the kitchen.

First up, the sauce. This is the most important part of a pizza for me. Without a good sauce, a pizza falls flat.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 cups chopped onions
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 kilogram tomato sauce
• 750 grams tomato paste
• 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
• 4 teaspoons dried basil
• 4 teaspoons dried oregano
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 4 bay leaves

Procedure

Over low heat, sweat the onions and celery in the olive oil and butter. Cook until the vegetables are soft and translucent. I took the photograph above at this state. The smell, so good!

Add the tomato sauce and tomato paste. Notice that I've listed the amount by weight. That's how they are sold here. For those buying in cans, I believe that would be about 32 oz. tomato sauce and 24 oz. tomato paste. Stir until smooth.

Lastly, add the rest of the ingredients. Simmer slowly for as long as you have the patience. 30 minutes is good. 60 is better. As with any red sauce, the longer you simmer (within reason) the better it'll be.

When using on your pizzas, be sure to remove the bay leaves. Wouldn't want some poor unsuspecting soul to bite into one. Not yummy!

This makes enough for 16 twelve-inch pizzas. Since my dough recipe makes a pair of twelve-inch pizzas at a time, I split the final sauce up into eight parts. Seven of the parts I put until sandwich-sized zip-top bags and put into the freezer for another day.

The eighth part went onto my pizzas. But, that's another post ...

Barbecue Sauce Showdown

As promised, I made some barbecue sauce to test out the Stubb's liquid smoke products and compare them to Wright's liquid smoke. I made my normal big batch (recipe below) and divided it into three parts. I added the appropriate amount of liquid smoke to each batch and labeled it so only I knew which smoke was where.

To my taste, there's a clear winner among the three. However, I will not announce it here or to anyone else until I get input from my usual guinea pigs ... otherwise known as my friends and family.

I think you can see in the picture that mine is no artisan kitchen. No fancy special-purpose bottles. Just old, washed-out Coke Zero bottles with masking tape labels. I know, Coke Zero is definitely industrial food. I said I wasn't a zealot.

So, onto the recipe for the barbecue sauce. I've used this recipe for a while. However, it has undergone some modification since I got to the Philippines. Here in Tacloban they don't have what we (in the States) call brown sugar. So, I use what they call brown sugar ... which is what we would call turbinado sugar.


Here are the ingredients:

• 2 cups water
• 2 cups distilled white vinegar
• 1 cup molasses
• 3 cups light corn syrup
• 2 cups tomato paste
• 1/2 cup turbinado sugar
• 1/4 cup liquid smoke
• 2 tbs salt
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tbs black pepper
• 1 tbs sweet paprika
• 1 tsp garlic powder

Since I was going to use three different liquid smokes, I left that out at first. What I do is put the water, vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices into a large, wide pot and heat them up over a low flame, whisking them together well. If I weren't comparing the liquid smokes, I'd add that ingredient now, too.


Then, I add the molasses. Since the molasses likes to stick to the measuring cup, I dip the cup into the warm liquid to help it dissolve without having to get out a spoon or some kind of scraper. One less thing to clean. I do the same thing with the corn syrup.

Yes, corn syrup. I'm painfully aware that I've ranted about it. I keep meaning to do some tests to create a replacement for it using local cane sugars. I will. Really.


Finally, I turn up the heat a bit to medium and add the tomato paste. I wisk this in thoroughly.

Once everything is melded well, I turn up the flame to medium-high and wisk constantly to reduce the sauce. There's no right amount to reduce. It all depends on taste. I tend to like to reduce quite a ways to produce a thicker sauce. Although, by no means do I go so far as to get down to level of commercial sauces.


When you've reduced it to the thickness desired, take it off the heat. Continue to wisk for a minute or so to prevent burning. Remember, this sauce has a lot of sugars in it. If they burn, it's bad. Very bad.

Once cool, put it into a container and refrigerate. I find this sauce goes very well on beef, pork, chicken, and turkey. Yields about two quarts of sauce.