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>>I love Italian cuisine, and marinara sauce is one of my favorite things to make.

It's easy to use any weeknight.

You can make spaghetti or lasagna or throw it on pizza.

Well, today on "Tassie's Table," it's simple pasta marinara.

I'm going to start with a nice warm pan, and to that I'll add two tablespoons of olive oil.

(bright music) (glass bowl clanking) And I love to get just a little sweetness.

Not a lot, I'm not adding sugar, but I'm going to get a little sweetness from carrot and then later on from my tomatoes, and I'll show you how to do that.

So we're gonna start with the carrot.

This is about a 1/4 cup, and I'm just sprinkling it over that nice hot oil.

And then I'm gonna top that with just a little bit of garlic.

Now, notice that I'm topping the carrot.

I'm not putting the garlic right into the heat of the oil because I don't want it to burn.

Garlic can burn so quickly and it tastes awful when it does.

And then I'm going to add a 1/2 cup of chopped onion, and I'll just kind of sprinkle that all around the edge.

Now we're gonna give this a nice stir.

You want the onion to get to the point where it's just slightly translucent.

And as you can see, my onion is starting to get translucent, just like that.

And now I want to add a little bit of tomato paste.

Now, tomato paste has a lot of sugar in it.

It's natural sugar.

Tomatoes have a lot of sugar in them, and it will bring out a different flavor in our pasta sauce if we make sure we maillardize it first.

Now, what is that?

Simple.

What we're gonna do is press that paste against the bottom of our pan, hitting that heat, and then we're going to let those natural sugars crystallize a little in the bottom of the pan and form an extra flavor profile.

Super simple to do.

Now while that's happening, I'm going to crush up some tomatoes.

I'm using San Marzano tomatoes for this.

San Marzanos are really nice and thick and rich.

They're not watery like you see in diced tomatoes.

So San Marzanos for this recipe are a must, but you need to crush them.

So I'm going to just take a towel to protect my shirt here.

You just wanna get in there and really squeeze that tomato, and I want to just get that texture into a nice small piece just like this.

All right, so now you can see that all of those tomatoes are squeezed.

They're in a good consistency for this sauce.

Now we can see this maillardization starting in the bottom of our pan.

You see that crystalline consistency starting to happen, and we're getting a little toasting on our tomato paste.

This is going to make our sauce so much richer than just throwing tomato sauce or tomato paste in a can.

Now, let's add our tomatoes to that.

Now, one thing that the tomatoes are doing as we add them to the bottom of this pan is that the acidity in those tomatoes is actually helping all of those little bits of that nice crystallized tomato paste come up from the bottom of the pan.

So now you don't feel anything sticking down there at all.

It's just great.

Now we want to add some wonderful flavor components.

So let's start off with a little bit of parsley.

Now these can also be added and toasted with all of your vegetables, but I like to add mine at the end.

I think they taste a little fresher that way.

A little bit of basil and oregano.

(tablespoon clanking) And I like to add just a little bit of pepper flake.

Now at this point, you can add salt.

I'm gonna go ahead and throw in just a little bit, about 1/2 teaspoon.

I'm going to let this simmer for about four to five minutes, and then I'm gonna top off my pasta.

Now I have a little fusilli in my bowl, and all you have to do is cook your pasta.

You can cook it when you're ready to cook it, or you can cook it up to a week in advance.

And then just put the pasta in a colander and run hot water over it, and it's ready to go with your sauce.

Now let's just give this a little stir through, and this will make enough for, at least, two servings.

There we go, now let's just plate that up.

(upbeat music) I love a good bowl of pasta, and this is a simple way to do a vegetarian dish.

You can also, of course, add meat to it, but it's just delicious.

It's a quick weeknight meal.

It's fun for the weekend, and it's great for a guest.

So let's top that with a little bit of cheese and some basil.

Nice fresh basil.

Ugh, just from the garden.

And there we have it.

I hope you'll enjoy this recipe.

It's quick, easy, delicious, and fun.

For this recipe and a lot more, join me anytime on "Tassie's Table."