a very easy tomato sauce recipe.

sometime last week i found out about gojee...it's basically a site full of recipes pulled from various blogs. the pictures are awesome, and you can even search by ingredients that you have on hand in your fridge or pantry. one of the first recipes that i came across was for marcella hazan's tomato sauce from steamy kitchen. comprised of 3 ingredients, it is a sauce that takes minimal effort. i tried it last night and was so pleased with the results.

basically, all you need is a 28oz can of whole plum tomatoes (san marzano if you can find it), an onion, and butter. i did my shopping at trader joe's so all i was able to find was the plum tomatoes. i opted for the canned plum tomatoes with basil, no salt added. the original recipe didn't specify if the tomatoes contained salt, and calls for salted butter, but i opted for unsalted so i could control how much salt was used. other than that and the addition of some fresh ground pepper, i followed the recipe.

the result? a very simple, yet flavorful pasta sauce. the taste of the tomatoes was the perfect intensity for me - i love the tang of tomatoes and when i make my own meat sauce for pasta, i tend to add tomato paste to intensify the taste of tomato. the canned tomatoes without any changes are intense and on the tart side as i had opted to use tomatoes with no salt. but the onion and the butter help to round out the full on intensity of the tomatoes. i finished with a bit of salt and fresh ground pepper, and found the sauce to be tasty. this sauce yields about two servings. since there was no meat in this sauce, i cooked up some chicken sausage with sundried tomatoes (also from trader joe's) to go with my pasta. i also grated a little parmesan cheese on to it. dinner is served!

the ramen tour, bonus stop: kitahama shoten.

i tend to read the food blogs on oc weekly and la weekly pretty regularly. so on one particular reading session of oc weekly, i came across a snippet about the "gourmet food festival" at mistuwa marketplace at both the costa mesa and torrance locations. both locations were going to feature kitahama shoten ramen. once i read about it, i told c right away so that we could hopefully add it as a bonus stop on our ramen tour. so on the saturday morning of the festival, we stopped in at mitsuwa in torrance for an early lunch - and got in line for the kitahama shoten ramen. the line wasn't very long when we got there, so we were able to order pretty quickly. c ordered the shio ramen, and i ordered the shiro miso ramen.



it cost about $10 each...but imho it was totally worth it. the soup had umami - and you could taste the delicate shiro miso... i always thought the shiro (white) miso to be so light on flavor - and when i make miso soup at home i usually combine the shiro miso and the aka (red) miso. but the broth of the shiro miso ramen was so tasty... i consumed it all. the toppings included roast pork, marinated poached egg, menma (bamboo shoots), negi (green onions), and a piece of nori (seaweed).



it was so good, i ate it all.



they also had gyoza as part of the gourmet food festival, so we bought the two kinds being offered - veggie and seafood - and for the price, i expected better. they were both a bit of a disappointment even though they were cooked fresh. the skin was a little too thick, the filling a little too mushy. i could totally do better...i think.