Aromatic Tomato Sauce and Sesame Asparagus

This is actually the third Bittman sauce that I've made. The one I didn't blog about is the butter variation. That variation was butter instead of olive oil. It was good, but not all that different from the basic. And I didn't make all the mistakes I made in the first one. This time, I used a smaller pan, so there wasn't any burning. And I cut the tomatoes with my kitchen scissors instead of squishing them with my hand. Squishing is more fun, but cutting means less tomato juice splattered all over my kitchen.

Anyway, Aromatic Tomato Sauce. This version has equal parts carrots, celery, and onion added to the tomato sauce. I'm not crazy about it. It's pinkish instead of red. And it just doesn't taste saucy to me. I guess it would be a good way to trick a kid into eating veggies. But I don't have any problems eating vegetables. Ooo, important part. I got to use my hand blender for this! I love my hand blender. Who stirs when you can blend? But it still wasn't saucy enough. It was. . . gritty? course? I want a smooth sauce. I'm still waiting to find the perfect one.

The Sesame Asparagus was amazing. This is a recipe La and I made in college. We both had a huge stack of asparagus recipes we wanted to try. We'd wait all year until asparagus was affordable, and then we'd gorge. Well, this week asparagus was $1.50/lb. Yay! So, Sesame Asparagus is steamed asparagus, cooled, with a sauce of sesame oil, white wine vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar. All sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds. Except this time I used rice vinegar and I added edamame. It was so good. I'm looking forward to leftovers.

Black Bean Soup

Edit: This is a guest post by my friend Sarah

Last week I made wonderful black bean soup. I boiled a cut up head of cabbage and a can of black beans in a pot of beef broth. To this, I added oregano, basil and salt to taste. After 40 min, I stuck the whole soup in the blender to create a really thick creamy soup (only because I don't like big pieces of cabbage, I suspect this would be just as good without blending). It has been a yummy lunch/snack for a week now!