One of the inescapable uses of wine in cooking is in making a nice marinara sauce. Now, again in my younger days and before I started to care about what I cooked, I would do this by adding red wine to a store-bought tomato sauce and then letting the combination simmer for a little while to thicken up. To be fair, this is actually a pretty good way to jazz up the flavor of a store-bought sauce, but at the end of the day, you are still working with something pre-made and missing out on the opportunity to dial in flavors of the sauce you are creating.
Developing the core marinara recipe was a lot of fun, and eventually I decided on a simple variant incorporating garlic, onions, shallots, tomatoes, oregano, and wine. To make a basic sauce, chop one shallot (about 1/2 cup) and one small white onion (about 1 cup) and add to a sauce pan along with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of minced garlic. Sauté the mixture until browned, about five minutes. Add 1/2 cup of wine and then bring the mixture to boil and reduce the volume by half. Add a 15 oz can of crushed tomatoes along with 1 teaspoon of dried oregano and salt and pepper to taste, then cover the mixture and allow to simmer on low heat for 30-40 minutes. Transfer the mixture to a food processor, pulse until blended to the desired consistency, and then either serve immediately or return to the sauce pan to keep warm until needed.
Marinara made from our wines turned out very nicely, although in many cases the fruits did not show up clearly in the sauces. I think doing this over again, I would double the amount of wine and then reduce the volume by two thirds. This change should impart much more fruit character into the sauce and will give me a reason to eat even more pasta! I’m also looking forward to taking the next step and upping my marinara game by using fresh and not canned tomatoes, especially since there are so many delicious types of tomatoes which are abundantly available in the Farmers Market here in Longmont that can be paired with different wines to really tease out some superb combinations, but that is a post for another day!
