Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce

Dinner was great and stupidly easy last night and I feel a need to share it. That means two food posts in a row, but it's this or nothing without another ready to go. (Hey that rhymes.)

A few months ago a guy on Twitter mentioned this tomato sauce and ever since I've wanted to try it. Apparently a somewhat famous recipe online (e.g. from the NYT), it certainly was new to me. From Marcella Hazan, an Italian-born food writer who's credited with helping spread traditional Italian cooking to America, it wasn't hard to find even when I couldn't initially remember her name. And it was so easy.

Here's what you need:

- 28 oz can San Marzano tomatoes (definitely splurge for some imported Italian tomatoes)

- 5 tbsp butter

- 1 medium sized onion (yellow or white)

- salt

Here's what to do:

1. Open the tomato can, remove peel/shell from onion and cut it in half

2. Put entire contents of tomato can, the butter, and the two onion halves in a saucepan

3. Place on stove, medium heat

4. Once warmed up, turn down to simmer for 45 minutes

5. Stir occasionally with wooden spoon, break up tomato chucks

6. When time's up, remove onion

7. Salt to taste

8. Serve over pasta

We had some pre-made (frozen) meatballs too

Yum

Seriously that's it, anyone can do this. Three ingredients, four with salt, and you've got some delicious sauce for dinner. I'll certainly be making this again. While absolutely nitpicking, the only change I'll make next time will be to cut the onion the other way (horizontally between stem and root) so pieces aren't falling off when the intent is to remove it.

Now I'm curious what my Italian friends think of this.