Chicken Meatballs and Marcella Hazan's Tomato Sauce

This week I decided to do all of the cooking in one day! It was refreshing to know that I didn't have to cook every night of the week. I can't wait to get my deep freezer so I can prep meals in advance and actually have a place to store them.

On the menu this week:
Bucatini with chicken meatballs
Chicken meatball subs
Beef Barley Soup
Ree Drummond's Banana Bread Bundt Cake

I started off my marathon cooking session with the tomato sauce that is going to be used for the bucatini and subs. Marcella Hazan was an Italian chef and cookbook author. Her focus was on simple, authentic Italian recipes. Marcella passed away this past September. In her honor I decided to try her simple tomato sauce recipe. It only has 3 ingredients. It was either going to be awesome, or very disappointing. In the end the sauce was pretty mediocre.

Tomato sauce
28oz can Italian whole tomatoes, undrained
1 onion, cut in halfa
5 Tbsp butter

Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add can of tomatoes and onion halves. Add a pinch of salt. Simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally, mash any large tomatoes with the back of your spoon. Discard your onion before tossing with pasta.

Voila! Doesn't get more simple than that. I just want to throw out there that I love tomatoes. The promise of this sauce is the clear tomato flavor. Well that is definitely a true statement. I found the sauce to be very acidic and I missed the traditional flavors of layered herbs and garlic. It was also a bit runny for my taste. While I wouldn't make it again, it was definitely worth making once!