Garlic Sauce

Because we were both working from home yesterday, Misty joined my lunchtime activity, which is watching a tv show from OnDemand. Hot stuff, I know. We chose, fairly randomly, an episode of "Best Thing I Ever Ate" about foods with garlic. Disclosure: we LOVE garlic.

One of the cooks on there talked about a tomato-based garlic sauce served with pasta from Bove's Cafe, in Burlington, Vermont, and we decided it had to be recreated.

Step one: create your tomato sauce base -- for us tonight, 2 28oz cans of Hunt's Petite Diced tomatoes (drained and rinsed), 1 6 oz can Tomato Paste, roughly 25oz Vegetable Broth (it was sitting in the fridge . . . I figured, it beats water), rosemary, basil, oregano, parsley, salt, pepper, sugar. Cook on low heat uncovered for now.

Step two: put half a stick of butter in sautee pan, melt it down on low heat, and, when melted, add 30 cloves garlic (our local ethnic grocer has them pre-peeled at about $1.75 for this quantity). Let the garlic cook down until it is very soft -- keep it moving around the pan so you don't burn it. This should take about 25-30 minutes.

Step three: add the garlic to your sauce and cover sauce if it is to a good consistency. You will want everything to simply soften at this point, so you want to retain the moisture by covering. If your sauce isn't thick enough yet, leave it uncovered for now.

Step four: press out about 10 more garlic cloves into the sautee pan with a few tablespoons of olive oil to brown the garlic. Brown it down about 5-10 minutes and add to the sauce.

Step five: continue to cook down the sauce until you are ready to serve with pasta.

Tonight, we're having gnocchi with our garlic sauce!