The perfect pasta sauce

I still find it funny that Americans call pasta sauce tomato sauce.  Seriously, it gives me a good giggle.  Mostly because when we want tomato sauce, we want what Americans consider ketchup - it seems like a polar opposite of pasta sauce.  Jbird didn't even realise this until this week and it took me a good long time to figure it out too. 

Back to the subject at hand.  I have been making our pasta sauce since we moved here, to varying degrees of success.  It should be an easy item to make, in my mind, but it turns out it's not always.  It's not simply a matter of simmering some tomatoes with other ingredients.  They need to be simmered for long enough to incorporate flavours and soften the tomatoes and have enough flavour added to stop them tasting too tomato-ey.  I've made enough watery, weak pasta sauces that it has become my personal vendetta to always make it well.  If I don't have the time, I don't make it.  If I haven't made it for a while, I'll look up a new recipe to see if there're any twists or turns I might take in my cooking.  In this journey, I have found that basically marinara (basic pasta sauce) is marinara.  There aren't too many changes that can be made.  My key is sugar.  It brings out the flavour to the tomatoes, while cutting their acidity.

Yesterday, I was reading a recipe for pasta sauce on a blog which offered me a secret ingredient.  A secret ingredient.  I was immediately drawn in and read through her detailed, humorous description with the usual  excessive number of additional (yet gorgeous) photos. You want to know what the secret ingredient was?  She did basically everything I do but she also added a jar of store bought marinara.  Huh? Her reasoning was that you couldn't get that depth of flavour without it and whatever they've done in the factory to create it.  Phew, I thought, why bother at all?  

The thing is, I don't disagree with her.  If I throw in that little half cup of left over sauce from earlier in the week, the brew comes out soooo good.  Because the second cooking up of any pasta sauce just improves its flavour.  But I'm opposed to her addition of store-bought.  Why bother spending all that money on fresh/canned ingredients when you could just spend a dollar on store bought in the first place.  

Lacking leftover pasta sauce, I have found that that sought after depth can also be achieved with stock/(red) wine vinegar/Worcestershire sauce or all of the above.  Oh and I often bung in cumin and/or cayenne pepper and always some kind of spice when I'm first softening the onions.  And never forget that teaspoon or two of sugar.  But also patience with a long slow cook and tasting it as you go to see how it's developing.