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Over the past three years, I’ve asked personal chefs and experts, as well as my overlord, Google,
and no one’s had a satisfactory answer. I’ve tried to achieve sweet, but that leads to sugary more
often than not. Tangy meant everything from vinegars to citrus juices, and it always came out like
acid. Savory usually ended up with lots of carmelized vegetables in it – tasty, but not the goal.
Well, tonight was the accidental breakthrough. Here’s what seems to be the closest thing to a clone
recipe.
1. Start with a large can of crushed tomatoes. Buy good quality, and buy canned, as canned
tomatoes are actually fresher than anything you’re going to get at the store during the off-season.
Obviously, if you have access to perfectly ripe tomatoes that are locally grown, go for it, but there’s
no such creature in Boston in late November that’s natural. Open the can and toss in 2 teaspoons
of sugar and a quarter teaspoon of salt. Stir, then let it sit for as long as you can. Ideally, if you can
prep the can in the morning for that evening’s dinner, awesome. Even just 5 minutes is better than
nothing, though.
2. In a non-stick saucepan (the non-stick is important!) add four tablespoons of the tomatoes (try
to make it mostly chunks) plus a quarter teaspoon of garlic, and a teaspoon of olive oil. Start over
33% heat (on my stove, there are numbers 1 – 6, and I did this at 2, 6 being hottest) and cook until
the water is driven off from the tomatoes. Stir a lot.
3. When the water is gone and the tomatoes are pasty, turn up the heat until the garlic mixed with
the tomatoes changes color and darkens a little. It’s more than okay at this point if the fringes of
in tomato residue on the sides of the pan get toasty. Stir a lot, scraping the sides of the saucepan to
get any toasty residue back towards the bottom.
J’u
o 4. When the garlic changes color to a darker shade OR the tomatoes are appreciably darker –
whichever comes first, throw the rest of the can in. Stir like crazy. Add a quarter teaspoon cracked
black pepper and a quarter teaspoon of sweet basil, dried.
5. Crank up the heat to 100% until the stirred pasta sauce boils, then turn it down to 50%; most of
the water in the can will surface to the top. Cook with the lid mostly on (le.tting vapor escape) for 15
minutes.
At the end of the process, you’ll have a tomato sauce that tastes remarkably like Bertucci’s, close
enough ideally to dissuade you from dropping $4-5$20 for a meal that costs a lot less to prepare at
home.
One last secret of Bertucci’s is that the pasta is cooked al dente, or somewhat chewy. Whatever the
directions are on the box of pasta; chop about a minute off the cooking time and you’ll have
roughly al dente pasta. Al dente is important for two reasons: first, the pasta is a different texture,
not mushy, and second, there’s still a fair amount of water in the pasta sauce. Cooking it al dente
will let the pasta absorb a good portion of that water when it’s mixed together.
What I do typically is take the pasta as it reaches al dente, drain it, toss it in a large bowl, throw all
the sauce on top of it, and stir for 5 minutes with a big spoon. This lets the pasta absorb excess
water from the sauce and ensures that it’s evenly coated.
Give this a try and let me know how it works for you!