Eggplant Parmesan, la premiere

I've been slightly stressed out by the abundance of produce in my fridge and pantry. Every time I eat something else, I feel a little bit guilty. I swear that every time I open the fridge the tomatoes are watching me, saying in tiny tomato-ey voices, "Eat us. We will go bad soon. You will have wasted us. Eat ussss....." It's pretty creepy really, so I decided today to get a jump on using stuff.

I'm saving some of the tomatoes to combine with all the jalapenos and garlic and bell peppers that have also been staring at me, and make a batch of superb salsa. Plus two of the tomatoes are still totally green, which I don't quite understand since we picked them a week ago, but they're really tiny, so maybe I just picked them too soon and they won't ever ripen.

Anyway, I started with two big tomatoes, dunked them in boiling water for a minute or so till their skins started splitting, and then I plopped them in an ice bath and peeled off their skins. Which, if you think talking tomatoes are creepy, wait till you touch skinned tomatoes! Eww!

Once they were skinned I quartered them, squeezed out the seeds, and then set them in the food processor to hang out. In the meantime I heated two tablespoons of olive oil and two tablespoons of butter in my largest saucepan. Then I sauted one small onion, roughly chopped, and six cloves of garlic until they were golden brown.

I tipped the whole onion/garlic/oil mixture into the food processor, and pureed it with the tomatoes until it was mostly smooth. Then I returned this mixture to the large saucepan, and added one 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes, since two tomatoes wasn't going to make enough sauce for the eggplant parmesan later. Normally this would probably smell really good, but since I was simultaneously baking the chocolate cake below, the aura was bizzare to say the least. So I recommend that you do not bake a cake while making this sauce. Unless of course you think garlic, chocolate, and tomato is a good combination.

I brought the tomato sauce to a boil and then let it simmer at a pretty high heat for about 30 minutes (with the lid on--it spits like crazy). Then I took the lid off, added 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, and another tablespoon or so of olive oil, and reduced the heat to low. I let it calm down a little, and then once it stopped spitting so much I put the lid back on and let it simmer for another two hours or so. I didn't even add extra spices or anything because I didn't want it to conflict with the eggplant, but the sauce came out quite lovely: thick, tomato-ey, and a vibrant red.

Tomato Sauce

2 large tomatoes, skinned, with the seeds squeezed out

1 small onion, chopped

6 cloves garlic

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

2 tsp sugar

1 (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes

Saute the onions and garlic in the butter and olive oil. Puree the tomatoes, onion, and garlic until smooth, then simmer on medium-high heat in a large saucepan along with the can of crushed tomatoes. After about half an hour remove the lid, stir in the salt and sugar, turn heat down to low, and simmer for an additional two hours.