chocolate chip rosemary scones + eggsister's bridal shower!

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alright, we defrosted the princess cakes successfully and pulled off a super fun scandinavian woodland tea party bridal shower for eggsister!!!! we held it out in the woods behind our house last weekend and showered eggsister with love and giggles before it actually showered raindrops. organizing showers might be my new favorite hobby so i told eggsister and eggsisterfiancé this weekend at the twins game to get to werk on miniature humans asap so that i can plan a baby shower.

here was our menu!

rhubarb princess cakes

rose petits fours- from erin’s book which will be out this fall. they were so good and rosy and moist, that recipe alone would make buying her book worth it so go preorder it right this second (and zomg watch the trailer on her preorder page it's so hypnotizing and satisfying).

sprinkle cookies and elderberry jelly thumbprints- used this dough for both

strawberry oreos 

chocolate chip rosemary scones (see below)

a little woodland cake- vanilla cake with nutella frosting, decorated with crushed cookie "dirt," buttercream succulents, fresh rosemary, dala horse cookies, almonds, sprinkles, shaved rhubarb roses, a marzipan sign painted with food coloring, and marzipan mushrooms. yes, i went wild with the toothpicks to make sure everything stayed in place. 

tea sandwiches- egg salad, pimento cheese, baloney (eggsister’s idea not mine but you know i jumped at the opportunity to buy baloney)

chopped veggies with yogurt ranch- i’m putting that recipe in my yogurt book!

my mom’s quiche! and i even used homemade pie crust (sarah’s crust!) the quiche recipe is on a super old newspaper clipping that my mom put in a homemade cookbook for me a long time ago, but one of our shower guests was asking for it so here it is: pre-bake a pie shell for 10 min at 375. combine these: 5 eggs, 1 1/2 c half and half, 1/4 tsp dry mustard, 1/8 tsp pepper, 1/16 tsp cayenne, 1/8 tsp nutmeg, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 1/4 c grated gruyere or swiss, 1 c finely chopped onion (softened in a skillet for 5-7 min), 8 strips bacon or 1/2 c ham. pour into pie shell, bake at 375 until set (begin checking for doneness at 45 min). 

rhubarb hibiscus tea- from shelly’s book and everybody loved it! it wasn’t too sweet and the color was such a pretty shade of pink that the clear glass bottles of it were like decorations themselves. 

here are some make-ahead tips in case you’re planning a shower: pretty much all of the sweet things could be made ahead. the princess cakes, cookies, and scones are able to be fully assembled and then frozen for up to a couple of weeks in advance. defrost in the fridge the day before and then bring to room temp the day of. i made the cake and the petits fours a few days before and stored them in the fridge. i prepped the sandwich fillings the day before and assembled the sandwiches the day of. and the quiche i also made the day before and then stored in the fridge until it was time for the party. 

for decorations, we referred to melissa’s book, scandinavian gatherings. that book is so stinkin cute. eggboy and i made the mushroom felt garland, the polymer clay mushroom sandwich picks, and the teacup terrariums using vintage teacups that have been in the eggfamily for generations. and eggboy made the tiered tree trunk stands from trunks in our yard! 

we also made flower crowns! we used pipe cleaners instead of floral tape since they were easier to distribute to all of the guests, but they came out so beautifully and convinced eggsister to have flower crowns at her wedding. our surprise decoration/activity was a homemade dala horse piñata. his name was bojack horseman. we made him a few weeks ago out of cardboard and a whole lot of packing tape (no need to do the paper mache thing, it turns out!) and hid him in a closet until the party. every so often we’d take him out and admire our work, which up close looked a little *rustic* but still we were really proud. i actually got kind of sad when it was time to whack him with a stick. luckily only his belly broke to let out all of the gummy bears and ring pops and the rest of him stayed in tact. no one except for little eleanor the flower girl went for the candy, everyone was sugared out. so our job was complete!

happy almost wedding, eggsister!!!!!!!!!

here is the recipe that i used for the chocolate chip rosemary scones. they are a basic buttery scone that have been infused with fresh rosemary. i added a bit of orange zest too because i always feel like that helps accentuate the rosemary flavor in the way that espresso boosts cocoa and cinnamon boosts tahini. great aunt ethel said that these were the best scones she’s ever had! i’ll take it, especially from ethel because she is a baking queen. 

and like all things that i infuse with one herb, i suddenly want to try them out with other herbs. mint chocolate chip scones? basil chocolate chip scones????

chocolate chip rosemary scones

makes 15 scones

ingredients

for the scones:

2 c (240g) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 tb baking powder

1 tsp kosher salt

6 tb (75g) sugar

zest of 1/2 orange

1/2 c (113g) unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1/2" cubes

6 oz (170g) chocolate chips

1/2 c (113g) rosemary cream (recipe below)

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

 

for the glaze:

3 tb (40g) reserved infused rosemary cream

1 c (120g) powdered sugar

pinch of kosher salt

clues

for the scones:

preheat the oven to 400ºf. line two baking sheets with parchment and set aside.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and orange zest. pulse to combine. add the butter and continue to pulse until butter is pea-sized. 

pour the mixture into a large bowl and then add the chocolate chips.

In a medium bowl, whisk together rosemary cream, egg, and vanilla extract. Add to the dry ingredients, and mix until just combined.

Turn the dough out onto a surface dusted with flour and roll it out to 1" thick. cut out 2" circles using a biscuit cutter and place on baking sheets, 1 1/2" apart. bake until bottoms are lightly browned, beginning checking for doneness at 12 minutes.

let cool for 10 minutes on the pan, then transfer to a wire rack.

for the glaze:

Combine reserved cream with the powdered sugar and a pinch of salt. Mix until spreadable (if it’s too thick, add a bit of water or additional heavy cream bit by bit until it’s spreadable).

spoon the glaze over the scones while they’re still warm. enjoy!

infused rosemary cream

ingredients

1 c (227g) heavy cream

4 sprigs fresh rosemary

clues

add the heavy cream and rosemary springs to a small saucepan. bring to simmer over medium high heat, then reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring often. let cool then strain out the rosemary. store in the fridge until ready to use. 

-yeh!

rhubarb short ribs

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ok show of hands, how many of you did your homework and pickled rhubarb last weekend? it's ok if you totally slacked, this short rib recipe actually tastes its best when you take the full 48 hours to make it, which, coincidentally is the minimum amount of time that you want to have your pickles go for. so get started today for a badass supper on sunday. or! spend a week mentally preparing and then go for it, just in time for father's day. cause dad's love meat!!!! and if your dad is anything like my dad he also un-ironically likes the color of rhubarb (pink).

(aside)

pops, why are you wearing a pink shirt??

pops: pink is my favorite color!

pops, why is your collar popped?

pops: it keeps my neck warm!

…was a real conversation that we had in the early 2000s, right around a time when pink popped collars were making their rounds in the preppy crowds of suburban american high schools. but pops doesn’t have an eye on trends, he’s just logical in his fashion choices and undoubtedly literally thought, “pink’s nice, warm necks are also nice, ok time to start my day!” before he cleared his entire wardrobe to make way for 70 different bernie sanders t-shirts, he had a large quantity of ahead-of-his-time millennial pink garments.

(end aside) 

so my dad likes pink! which is part of my explanation for when you ask why we're sprinkling our father's day meat with hot pink pickles. the other part is that we have shit tons of rhubarb and rhubarb with short ribs, it turns out, is the chrissy teigen and john legend of braised meat land. 

this recipe is heavily inspired by the pomegranate molasses braised lamb that i just about died over at zahav last month. they're a multi day production where you cure, braise, rest, reheat, inhale, exhale, and the only smells that really come close to as good all are freshly baked challah and santal 26. these short ribs pull sweet and sourness from a sticky rhubarb jam situation and then get some additional sweetness from their bed of onions that over time get caramelized down to almost an onion jam. the amount of flavor is a lil absurd. to the point where i had to actually pump the breaks a bit with the braising liquid by watering down my chicken stock. but paired with crispy persian rice and a bright pink sour rhubarb pickle, you basically have a perfect dinner. it's actually the dinner i had on my birthday right before eggboy’s cake!

i've done all this with bone-in and boneless short ribs. boneless was easy to pick up in town, while bone-in i had to call around about and then special order which yielded some gnarly grocery store phone holding music. i didn't necessarily find that the flavor (in this recipe at least) was sacrificed by having boneless, so i'll say that you should go with whatever route you'd like since i'm already asking a lot of you by requiring 48 hours for this thing.

the tahdig (crispy persian rice) is a great companion to this!! if you’ve never had it, there are great directions here. it’s just really delicious good rice with a crispy saffrony shell that, when all mixed up with short rib juices, adds some nice texture to the perfect bite. (i made minis in little cocottes and simply cut the cooking times down by a few minutes.) we also had these short ribs in tortillas one night with fresh herbs and a pile of pickled shredded carrots and it was mad good too. you really can’t go wrong. at all. which is what i like about short ribs. they taste so good even if you’re out of shape in the meat department and have to google dumb things like how to cut them. 

rhubarb short ribs

serves 6

ingredients

Kosher salt

1/2 c + 2 tb (125g) sugar

1 tsp fennel seeds

1/2 tsp ground allspice

Black pepper

5 pounds bone-in short ribs or 4-4 1/2 pounds boneless short ribs

4 c (500g) rhubarb, chopped and divided

juice of 1/2 lemon

2 large yellow onions, thinly sliced

1 head of garlic, peeled, cloves smashed

2 tb olive oil

about 2-3 c chicken stock 

about 2-3 c water

 

for serving:

pickled rhubarb

tahdig (optional: top with crushed pistachios, chopped dates, and rose petals or ana)

clues

day one: in a small bowl combine 2 tb salt, 2 tb sugar, the fennel, allspice, and a bunch of turns of pepper. rub it all over the short ribs and place them in a big pan. cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. 

(get your pickled rhubarb going)

make the rhubarb sauce (this can be made on day 1 or day 2): combine 2 c (250g) of the chopped rhubarb, the remaining 1/2 c (100g) sugar, and a good pinch of salt in a saucepan and heat over medium high heat, stirring often. when the rhubarb softens and collapses into a purée, reduce the heat to medium and continue to cook, stirring often, until it reduces to 2/3 c (200g). this should take around 25-35 minutes. stir in the lemon juice, let cool, cover, and refrigerate until further notice.

day two: preheat the oven to 475ºf. place the onions, garlic, and remaining 2c (250g) chopped rhubarb in a roasting pan and toss with the olive oil. if you’re using the same roasting pan that you cured the short ribs in, give the pan a little rinse first to get rid of any excess salt. place the short ribs on top of the onion mixture and roast uncovered for 20 minutes, until browned. 

take it out of the oven and reduce the oven’s heat to 325ºf. pour in the rhubarb sauce and then add the stock and water until it comes halfway up on the short ribs. i do this by pouring in one cup of stock, and then one cup of water, and then another cup of stock, and another cup of water, etc., and stopping once i reach the halfway mark. (you could also just dilute your stock before pouring it in but then you run the risk of having leftover diluted stock.) cover with foil and then bake for 5-6 hours, until the meat is very soft and falls off the bone (if you're going with boneless use your imagination to imagine if they would fall off the bone or not). taste it, add more salt if you feel like it needs it. at this point you *could* give in and eat it, but it’ll be better if you let it sit over night. so let it cool, cover it, and stick it in the fridge.

(oh also on day two, you can get your tahdig rice soaking)

day three: preheat the oven to 350ºf. scrape off the layer of fat that’s accumulated on your short ribs and discard it. cover the pan and bake for 30 minutes, or until heated through. 

make your tahdig. 

slice your pickled rhubarb.

slice and serve your short ribs, spooning some of the juices on top. top with pickled rhubarb (and fresh herbs for greenery if you'd like), serve with tahdig!

leftovers can be frozen! 

-yeh!

mini rhubarb princess cakes

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our house right now is covered with decorations that fall into one of five categories that altogether make up the theme for eggsister’s bridal shower next weekend:

-cute objects from the woods

-tea parties

-floral things

-scandinavia

-things that are supposed to look like they fall into one of the above categories but because eggboy and i have limited crafting skills they create a category all on their own

we’re actually really proud of our work so far though and have our trusty hot glue gun to thank but we still have a lot of decorations to make before the big day. we’ve been referring to my friend melissa’s book, scandinavian gatherings, for inspiration because it has a whole chapter on creating a woodland tea party, complete with teacup terrarium and mushroom felt garland tutorials. so kewt. i’ve been looking forward to throwing this party since i got the book last year so when eggsister got engaged and i connected the dots that eggsister likes tea and the woods and is scandinavian, i got very (!!!) excited!! since she also loves all things floral, we’re going to be making flower crowns. i’ve been lightly stressed about this because navigating real flowers is even more intimidating than buttercream flowers and i don’t know the protocol for ordering them. is it appropriate to just say: i want a lot of different colored flowers, i don’t know the difference between a petunia and a daisy? maybe we should simply pipe buttercream flower crowns to our heads? that’s got to have some moisturizing benefits…

i can’t tell you the other big activity that we have planned because it’s a surprise. but i can tell you that it is not a game where you guess the date of the bride and groom’s first smooch and it is not the thing where you sit in a circle and watch the bride open presents. it’s way more violent than that. i’ll tell you next week!

the menu is obviously filled with lots of pretty colored tea cakes and crustless tea sandwiches. i’ve got petits fours in the making and little sandwich picks with tiny clay mushrooms on the end, and eggboy is making tiered plates out of tree stumps from the yard. since princess cakes are scandinavian and adorable, i thought they would be perfect for this occasion. i love making mini princess cakes (well, since this whole thing they’ve been referred to as “boobie cakes” in our house.) and i figured that if ikea sells them in freezer section, then i too can make them ahead and keep them in our freezer until sunday. fingers crossed that this works.

our rhubarb patch is currently bursting at the seams so rather than the traditional raspberry jam i’ve gone with a basic rhubarb jam which adds a nice springy sour note. i also made one batch that subbed the almond flour for hazelnut flour, which was great. ooh i bet pistachio flour would also be great! the fun with princess cakes is endless. honestly how could it not be when there is all of that marzipan?

mini rhubarb princess cakes

makes 20 mini cakes

ingredients

for the cake:

1 1/4 c (150g) all-purpose flour

3/4 c (84g) almond flour

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda 

1/2 c (113g) unsalted butter, softened

3/4 c (145g) sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp almond extract

1/2 c (112g) buttermilk

 

for the assembly:

1 c (227g) heavy cream

1/2 c (60g) powdered sugar

a pinch of kosher salt

 

1/4 c (90g) rhubarb jam, store bought or homemade (Recipe below)

 

13 oz (370g) marzipan

food coloring

Powdered sugar, for dusting

clues

for the cake:

preheat the oven to 350°f. line a quarter sheet pan with parchment and set aside.

combine the flours, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a medium bowl.

In a separate large bowl, use an electric or stand mixer to beat the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy, about 3-5 minutes. add the egg, vanilla, and almond and beat well. add 1/3 of the the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix until just combined. then add 1/3 of the buttermilk. repeat with another third of each, and then the final third, mixing until just combined.

spread the batter out evenly in the quarter sheet pan and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. begin checking for doneness at 18 minutes.

let the cake cool fully in the pan (the cake can be made in advance and frozen) and then use a biscuit cutter to cut into 20 2" circles.

for the assembly.

make whipped cream by beating the heavy cream, sugar, and salt to stiff peaks.

spread each cake circle with a layer of jam, and top with a small mound of whipped cream. stick in the freezer while you prep the marzipan.

prep the marzipan by kneading food coloring into the marzipan, dusting your work surface with powdered sugar if it’s sticky. knead a majority of it with blue or green, and then color a small ball of it with pink for the roses and leave another small ball uncolored for the petals. roll the marzipan out to 1/8" thick. cut out a large circle, and then press it down around each of cakes, trimming off edges and re-rolling scraps. 

make little marzipan roses with pink marzipan by making little flat snakes and rolling them up in a swirl, add little petals, and place on top of the cakes.

serve immediately or refrigerate for up to a day or two until serving. enjoy!

rhubarb jam

ingredients

2 c (250g) chopped rhubarb

1/2 c (100g) sugar

a pinch of kosher salt

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp rosewater, optional

juice of 1/2 lemon

clues

in a saucepan, combine the rhubarb, sugar, salt, vanilla, and rosewater (if using). cook over medium heat until the mixture gets bubbly and then reduce the mixture over medium heat until thick and sticky, stirring often, about half an hour. stir in lemon juice, let cool and store in the fridge. 

-yeh!

deep dish pizza and some other stuff!

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happy pizza friday everyone! i've been glued in my kitchen, testing up a storm (and secretly binge watching unreal and wet hot american summer) all week that it wasn't until eggpop relayed through eggboy that he was sick of reading about carrot cake that i realized i needed to deliver some pizza to you in time to make it for pizza friday. (actually in most time zones you don't have time but there is always saturday and rule #56 of friday pizza night is that if you forget to have it on a friday, you can defo have it on a saturday.)

first some updates from the test kitchen this week:

-wow, my bagel shaping truly sucks! i had my first try at bagel making that was unsupervised by a bagel teacher and they didn’t rise and looked like what i imagine amoebas look like. they tasted like very thick dumpling wrappers though, which i obviously wasn’t mad about, so even though they were a failure they were still tasty. I have a hunch that the reason they didn’t rise was because we turned on our air conditioning this week and I also got impatient when we were late for a party. This is the recipe that I used and it’s the one that bagel teacher dave loves, so I plan to try it again soon with more patience and less a/c. 

-we made lox for our bagels because we received some of the season’s first salmon from alaska (thanks copper river)! i went with a pretty basic cure of salt, brown sugar, and pepper. I don’t think I used enough of it though because it just wasn’t salty enough, or maybe I should add more flavorings. There’s a very citrusy lox recipe in the Huckleberry book that I’d like to try. I’m going to Alaska next month to catch some fishies, so I’ll try it then.

-I’m working on butter cakes. I made approximately one thousand of them over #MDW (this hashtag caught me by surprise) along with a spreadsheet of all of the vanilla butter cake measurements that I could find. My goal is to make a very reliably moist* butter cake, one that’s as reliably moist as oil cakes. And after a conversation with Alana today who swore up and down that she’s never had a dry butter cake, I realized that maybe my moisture tolerance is on the high end, or rather my dryness tolerance is low end, (or that I'm getting the vocabulary wrong altogether and that what I actually want is a soft cake). Dry cakes are right up there with under salted food and death as my greatest fears. So right now I’m working on a part butter, part oil cake, and I’ve made some great ones but they collapse just slightly when they come out of the oven, which can mean that there’s too much liquid. So little by little (when some more birthdays come up, that is... Do you live in Grand Forks and have a birthday coming up? Please email hello@mynameisyeh.com) I’ll decrease the liquid in the recipe until it doesn’t collapse and then see if it’s just as moist.

*the word “moist” is ok now.

-Because bagels and lox weren’t enough multi-day recipes to test in one week (well, because i procrastinated last week), short ribs also appeared on the schedule this week. Oh hell yeah! I spent six days making rhubarb short ribs to the sound of wet hot american summer, and I have a great feeling about this recipe. Very excited. Jazz hands. Confetti emoji. Makes up for the bagel failure. Luckily you can freeze braised meats pretty easily so we did not explode.

furthermore:

unglued camp registration opens on monday!!! and i'm going to be the lunch lady again!! i cannot wait. camp director ashley did a hilarious job with the f.a.q.s so go read them even if you don’t plan to register (but ummm you should plan to register because we’re going to eat hotdish and make cake and dance in banana costumes). thanks zach for these camp photos from last year!

ok let’s talk about pizza:

in the battle of chicago pizza versus new york pizza, i would have a really hard time choosing sides. i would probably cheer from the new york side of the stadium for the first half and then switch jerseys and cheer from the chicago side for the second half, although i’d probably get kicked out of the new york side before halftime anyway since my chicago accent is so strong. the only true difference between my love for the two types is that i could probably eat new york pizza every single day for six meals a day while my capacity for chicago pizza tops out at once, maybe twice, a month. i think of new york pizza more of like an open faced grilled cheese (that then becomes close faced when you do the right thing and fold it in half) and chicago pizza as a thick buttery pie that is weird not to eat with a fork and knife. it’s the perfect special occasion food when your special occasion falls on a friday, and no amount of meditating can produce the patience required for people who say that chicago pizza “isn’t really pizza.” you people, delete your account.

my mom sent us four lou malnati’s pizzas over the holidays which was one of the best gifts ever in the whole wide world, and we were just starting to run low when shelly’s book, vegetarian heartland, showed up at our door. i had carrot cake batter all over my hands so i intended to just to do a quick flip-through before transferring it to my coffee table, where i keep all of my new cookbooks that i need to go through, but then i couldn’t stop and my quick flip-through turned into a very long combing through with post-its and lists and a sudden desire to start a cookbook club just so that i could try a lot of these recipes at once. the recipes are so original and midwesty, i’m in love. when i got to the page with the chicago deep dish pizza i immediately changed around my schedule so i could make it that friday.

i’ve always considered chicago pizza to be like bagels in that they’re one of those things that are best left up to the experts, like lou and gino. and since i tend to get back to chicago at least a few times a year, i’ve been ok with that. but after having some bagel success (and before this week's bagel failure), i was feeling kind of encouraged so i gave it a try and i was really happy that i did because shelly’s pizza is the bee’s knees bomb dot com!!! The crust is bready and soft, different than the crispy flaky lou mal’s crust but so so good and buttery and not too difficult to make. I loaded ours up with thinly sliced peppers and onions and a bit of spinach for health, and then instead of baking the second one we froze it for a rainy day. I can't wait for that day.

chicago-style deep-dish loaded veggie pizza

serves 8

from shelly westerhausen's vegetarian heartland

ingredients

One 1 1/4-oz [7-g] packet active dry yeast

1 tsp sugar plus 1 Tb

1 1/4 c [300 ml] warm water (110° to 115°F/43° to 45°C)

1/2 c [110 g] unsalted butter

3 1/2 c [490 g] all-purpose flour

1/2 c [70 g] coarse cornmeal, plus more for sprinkling

1 tsp fine sea salt

1 lb [455 g] mozzarella cheese, shredded

Optional toppings: thinly sliced green bell pepper, thinly sliced onion, diced cherry tomatoes, sliced button mushrooms, pitted black olives, pineapple chunks, sliced marinated artichoke hearts

1 recipe Basic Tomato Sauce (recipe below) or 3 c [720 ml] store-bought sauce

clues

In a small bowl, stir together the yeast, 1 tsp of the sugar, and 1/4 cup [60 ml] of the warm water and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the remaining 1 cup [240 ml] water and the butter and cook until the butter melts, about 2 minutes.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the flour, cornmeal, salt, and the remaining 1 Tbsp sugar on medium-low speed until combined, about 20 seconds. With the mixer on medium-low speed, slowly add the butter mixture and the yeast mixture and mix until combined. Remove the paddle and attach the dough hook. Knead on medium-high speed until an elastic dough forms, about 5 minutes.

Oil a large bowl. Transfer the dough to the bowl, cover with a kitchen towel, and let rise in a warm spot until doubled, about 11/2 hours.

Line two 9-in [23-cm] springform pans or two 9-in [23-cm] cake pans that are 2 in [5 cm] deep with aluminum foil and sprinkle with cornmeal.

Punch down the dough and transfer it to a floured surface. Divide it into two equal pieces and form into balls. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough balls into 12-in [30.5-cm] rounds. Transfer the rounds to the prepared pans and press firmly against bottom and sides to keep it in place. Cover again with kitchen towels and refrigerate until completely chilled, about 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 425°F [220°C].

For each pizza, sprinkle half of the mozzarella over the bottom of the dough, spreading it evenly. Cover with up to 1/2 cup [75 g] of toppings and then drizzle half of the tomato sauce over the toppings.

Bake until the sauce is bubbly, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes before serving. Cut into wedges and serve. Don’t be afraid to use a knife and fork for these pizza slices!

basic tomato sauce

makes 3 cups

ingredients

1 Tb extra-virgin olive oil

1 yellow onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 c [60 ml] red wine (optional)

2 tsp dried Italian herbs or 2 Tb chopped fresh Italian herbs (such as oregano, basil, or thyme)

One 28-oz [794-g] can whole tomatoes

1 tsp sugar (optional)

1/8 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

clues

In a large skillet over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the onion and sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the wine (if using) and herbs and turn the heat to high. Let the wine simmer until almost all the liquid is evaporated, 1 to 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, sugar (if using), and red pepper flakes (if using). Using your hands or a knife, break apart the tomatoes. Simmer until the sauce thickens and has reached the desired consistency, 8 to 12 minutes. Remove from the heat and season with salt and pepper. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

-yeh!