Your More-Than-Everyday Marinara

Canning is hip, y'all. Read a book.

Making a big batch of marinara, canning it, and having it ready to go will save you more times than you know. You'll be able to use it for everything from french bread pizza to stuffed shells to chicken parmesan to that little extra freshness you need to accompany your Papa John's at 4am. This also happens to be a very cheap sauce to make...here goes:

Ingredients (for the big batch) - makes about 7-8 quarts

3 102oz cans of whole peeled roma tomatoes

4 oz fresh basil

1 lb garlic - peeled and roughly chopped

1-2 cups olive oil

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 tbls ground cayenne pepper

3 cups red wine

salt and pepper

1. Get your big-ass pot on the stove. Turn the heat up to medium. Add olive and garlic. Saute for 2-3 minutes. Go ahead and stir frequently so the garlic doesn't burn.

2. Add the tomatoes, basil, sugar, cayenne pepper, and wine. Turn the heat up to full blast and let it get to a boil.

3. The next step has the potential to paint your kitchen red if you're not careful. Turn the heat down. If you have an immersion blender, stick it in the pot, and blend it all up. If you aren't rich, and don't have an immersion blender, then you'll have to puree the mixture in batches in your blender. Make sure you cover your blender with a towel each time you blend a batch otherwise it will spray everywhere (yes, that has happened to me)

4. Once it is all blended and back in the big pot, leave the heat on medium-high, and let the sauce boil/simmer for 1 hour. Towards the end of the hour, taste your delicious marinara, and add salt and pepper to taste.

After all that, you're free to serve it up to the neighborhood, or can it. If you look up canning instructions, the sauce should last 6-8 months unrefrigerated. Shoot us a comment if you've got questions and/or high praise.

Enjoy your homemade marinara.

 - Andy

Grilled Top Sirloin with Mojo de Ajo

So this is our first official post on this blog, it was supposed to be Andy's post, but he is currently incapacitated and lying on the couch with a headache. We are 53% sure that it doesn't have to do with the food we just made, since I'm still going strong (we're very sarcastic people in case that isn't coming through to you).

This meal is so great for many different reasons, the main one being: resolutely being able to tell which of your friends are vampires.

The recipe for the Mojo de Ajo is actually quite simple:

Ingredients:

4 bulbs of garlic - peeled (about 2 cups of peeled cloves)
2 cups of olive oil
juice from 2 limes
1/2 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tablespoon kosher salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Mix garlic, olive oil, and kosher salt in a 9x9 baking dish or something similar. You need enough olive oil to cover most of the garlic cloves.

When the oven is ready, bake the garlic mixture for 40 minutes. During these 40 minutes, you might have the whole neighborhood come over to see what the hell smells so good. Don't give in to their madness. After 40 minutes, take the dish out of the oven. Add the lime juice and red pepper flakes. Mash the mixture with a potato masher or something similar. Give it a quick stir, and place back in the oven for another 20 minutes.

Now we can prep the steak and anything else you want to grill. Here's what we did:

Top Sirloin Steak
2 tomatoes - halved
2 ears of corn
2 limes - halved

Sprinkle everything with salt and pepper - very liberally. Since I had some mojo de ajo already prepared, I put some of that heavenly garlic oil on the veggies and steak before grilling, too. For a medium rare steak, we grilled the sirloin for about 6-7 minutes on each side.

We ended up with a child-like euphoria after eating this meal. And since, I have added mojo de ajo to everything save my coffee and cereal in the morning. We'll probably use the mojo in the future for another dish, so make a big mason jar of it. Stick it in the back of the fridge, and have it ready for next time. You'll be glad you did.