Pizza sauce

A good pizza sauce is a vital ingredient for any good pizza. A robust sauce, few toppings and lots and lots of cheese is the way pizza has been popularized throughout the US. I usually like my pizzas with a good helping of pizza sauce and lots of vegetables, but tend to go easy on the cheese. Here is how I make my pizza sauce.

What you need:
Garlic - 3 cloves, minced
Oil - 2 tbsp.
Tomato - 5 or 6 large, juicy ones, chopped
Basil - a handful, chopped (I used fresh basil. It can be substituted with dried basil)
Italian seasoning - a few generous sprinkles
Sugar - 1/2 tsp
Salt - to taste
Red chilli flakes - to taste

Heat oil. Saute garlic in it. Then add in the rest of the ingredients. Mix well and cook covered over a low flame until the tomatoes are well cooked and mushy and the sauce reaches the desired thickness. You can choose to blend the sauce if you like it smooth. I like mine chunky and have left it as it is.
Once completely cooled, this can be refrigerated and will stay good for up to a week.
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Spaghetti with no meat veggie balls in tomato sauce

I have often heard people talk about how good spaghetti and meat balls are together. Being a vegetarian, i decided to avoid the meat and cook vegetable balls to create Spaghetti and veggie balls. The vegetable balls are cooked in an aebelskiver/appam/paniyaram pan, thereby minimizing the use of oil.

What you need :
Cook spaghetti according to package directions. Drain and run cold water over it and set aside.

To make the vggie balls :

Potato - 1, peeled and diced
Carrot - 1, diced
Cauliflower florets - 1/2 cup
Onion - 1, chopped fine
Bread slices - 4
Oil - a few tsp

Steam cook the potatoes, carrot and cauliflower and then mash well. Heat a tsp of oil and saute onions in it. Add the mashed veggies and saute until moisture is absorbed. Add soaked and squeezed bread slices and mix well. Shape into balls. Heat an appam/paniyaram pan with a few drops of oil in each depression. On a low flame, cook the balls, turning over once in a while until all sides are browned evenly.

For tomato sauce:
Tomato - large, juicy, ripe - 4
Onion - a small one, chopped fine
Salt - to taste

Heat a teaspoon of oil in a pan. Saute onions till pink. Add the pureed tomatoes and salt. Cook on low flame until at least half of the moisture is evaporated and the sauce starts to thicken.

To serve :
Arrange some pasta on a serving plate. Place two veggie balls on it and top generously with sauce. Serve immediately.

Simple pizza sauce

The little girl and I both love to read.....we often go to a library nearby where we take ages trying to decide which books to take back home with us. On the last visit, LG picked up this book called Golgappu makes pizza which tells a story about a little boy who, with the help of his mother, makes pizzas for a pizza party with his friends. Soon after reading this book, she wanted to make pizza. So we did and here's the simple tomato based pizza sauce that we made.

What you need:
Tomato - 4 large, juicy ones
Onion - 1, chopped fine
Garlic - a few cloves
Oil - 1 tbsp
Salt - to taste
Sugar - a little

Heat oil in a pan. On a low flame, saute the onions until pink. Crush the garlic slightly and stir it in. Add chopped tomatoes, cover and cook for 8-10 minutes on low flame. Crush the tomatoes with a ladle. Add salt, sugar and a cup of water. Let it simmer for 15-20 minutes or until the sauce thickens.
This is the sauce that we used on our pizza. We kept it simple and non-spicy because that's how my daughter prefers it. However, this can be spiced up with some chillies or chilli powder. You could also add your favorite herbs to make it more flavorful.