Sunday Sauce!! …….and cooking memories.

I’m not Italian, but my Mother’s best friend was. She taught her to cook  authentic Italian dishes like sauce, meatballs, eggplant parm and lasagne. My Mother taught all of us to cook when we were tall enough to reach the stove LOL. This was back in the day of coffee “percolators”. No Keurig back then. In our household FIRST ONE UP MADE THE COFFEE! That was probably around age 7-8. I can still hear and smell the coffee brewing and we ALL drank coffee even at that age. Soon after that you learned how to cook breakfast and eventually everything. I almost went to chef school instead of med school. Now I still love big Sunday dinners with friends and family.  Denise is Italian and when we first met we started having our “sunday sauce dinners”.  My favorite was a day out ice skating or having a “luge” party next to our house on the lake in Ringwood, NJ. We’d have bottles of wine buried in the snow and kids and adults laughing and getting soaked riding tubes down the hill onto the frozen lake.   Then we’d finally all go inside for a huge pasta dinner, exhausted but famished ….. We don’t have any family here in Florida and Sunday is now also usually “boat day” , but we have lots of new friends that we often have over for dinner.  The point of it is to make amazing food without spending much time in the kitchen.  I think I’ve hit on the perfect “Sunday Sauce” (and no….it’s not “gravy”) recipe that you can throw in your slow cooker (Go dig it out of that closet, you KNOW you have one somewhere!) in the morning and by 6 you’ll have a luscious, thick, incredible sauce that literally will coat that ziti ! (or my favorite lately, angel hair). It’s super easy and quick to put together. I have the largest slow cooker because I like lots for the rest of the week and to freeze. So here it is……..give it a try and tell me what you think!

Slow Cooker Sunday Sauce

Ingredients: 1 HUGE can of crushed tomatoes (I get the restaurant size at Costco) or 3-4 large cans. 1 medium can of chopped tomatoes 1 can of tomato paste I like Contadina and San Marzano tomatoes from Italy. 1 large onion chopped Big splash of extra virgin olive oil 4 cloves garlic chopped Salt, pepper, dash of red pepper (adjust these later) Dozen or so BASIL leaves torn up. I grow my own, but also buy the live ones in pots sometimes and just keep in the kitchen. If you HAVE to you can use dry basil around 3 large tsps. I also love to throw in chicken thighs….organic of course…….you don’t need to pre-cook them.

So gathering all that takes about 10 minutes. The HUGE can of tomatoes takes the most time trying to get it open! Splash the oil in the bottom, next the chopped onions and garlic, next the chicken pieces (you could also do pork or sausages if you’d like), salt and pepper the chicken, next the basil, next the crushed tomatoes, a dash more salt and pepper……put the top on, set for 6 hours and soon the smells will fill the house! Don’t worry …..YES the chicken will cook and be amazing. Go out for a hike, on the boat, on the bike…….wear your mask if you’re around people and then come back and have a Sunday Sauce Dinner with your close friends and/or family!

Let me know if you like this and I’ll share lots of other Slow Cooker things like “pulled chicken” I also have to post Denise’s chicken/turkey meatball recipe!