Homemade Pizza Recipe – Tomato Sauce

The things you spot when you’re not even looking for them. While researching my year-end column on the area’s Best New Restaurants I ran across this video randomly playing in the corner of my web browser.

Hmm, I thought, that sure looks like Ruth Gresser from Pizzeria Paradiso. Sure enough, it was. In this demonstration video, Gresser shows how to make a quick, summer-style pizza sauce with fresh tomatoes.

Three things really stood out for me in the video:

1. Gresser must be a stickler for mise en place and properly cut ingredients. Check out her tomatoes. Those must be the most gorgeous and uniformly diced tomatoes I’ve ever seen.
2. Gresser believes in a quickly cooked pizza sauce rather than a long-simmered one, the latter of which typically cuts down on the tomato’s tartness. In the winter, longer cooking times tend to work better because they allow the sauce to better incorporate the dried herbs that you rely upon during the season.
3. I really miss summer.