Tomatomania

My friend Bridget had to skip town for a family emergency, so she loaded me up with all the tomatoes and eggs I could carry. The tomatoes were really ripe, so our usual M.O. of adding sliced tomato to lunch and dinner was not going to use them fast enough. I synthesized all the marinara recipe information I could glean from Serious Eats into one recipe (which I share after the jump). Then I used the remaining tomatoes - mostly gorgeous yellow tomatoes - to make a salsa based on the recipe for salsa fresca in Mexican Light by Martha Rose Shulman.
The following marinara recipe (well, according to Mario Batali, it's not a true marinara, but its texture is closer to a marinara than a tomato sauce, which is thicker, less chunky, and cooked longer) is a hybrid of Mario Batali’s Basic Tomato Sauce, a marinara sauce recipe adapted from Lidia Bastianich's Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen, and comments about marinara sauce from the readers of Serious Eats.

Marinara Sauce

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
  
• 1/2 large or 1 small red onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice
  
• 8 garlic cloves, peeled and pressed
  
• 4 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves (or 1 teaspoon dried)
  
• 2 teaspoons crushed red pepper (this makes a fairly spicy sauce)
  
• 1/2 medium carrot, finely shredded
  
• 3 pounds ripe fresh plum tomatoes, or one 35 ounce can Italian plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano), seeded and lightly crushed, with their liquid
  
• Salt
  
• 10 fresh basil leaves, torn into small pieces
  
• 1/4 teaspoon oregano
  

Procedure

1. Heat the oil in a 2- to 3-quart nonreactive saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion. When the onions are about halfway done (about 5 minutes) add the garlic.

2. Add the thyme, crushed red pepper, and carrot; cook 5 minutes more.

3. Add the tomatoes. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat to just bubbling, stirring occasionally for 20-30 minutes. Break up tomatoes with a whisk or spoon, until sauce is chunky and thick

4. Stir in the basil and oregano about 5 minutes before sauce is finished. Taste sauce, and season with salt and red pepper if necessary. Serve immediately or set aside for further use. The sauce may be refrigerated for up to 1 week or frozen for up to 6 months.

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