blog — molly yeh

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team usa cake!

in

two. days. until. the. olympics!!!!!!!!!!! have you been following all of the ig stories of all of the skaters flying to korea and going through team processing and getting all of their fancy team outfits and rings and stuff?? it is so fun, i love looking behind the scenes.

but starting thursday, everybody please keep your voices down, i have to focus on every single figure skating event and also hockey and some speed skating and chloe kim and her great hair. it's going to be great. it's all in my ical.

please enjoy this cake that is my ode to team usa!! it's basically a big soft loaf of an italian almond cookie that's been shaped into an american flag and and topped with a marzipan olympic-y logo. it's sooo rich and almondy and requires so much butter (!!!!!). you're going to think that your stand mixer is gonna overflow, but don't worry, it won't (it shouldn't if you have at least a 5 qt), and this recipe makes two cakes so you can enjoy one during the opening ceremony and one during the closing ceremony. or share one with a friend who is equally excited about team usa figure skating. (are you that friend?? can you also be my friend? i think my friends are sick of me talking their ears off about axels.)

i thought it'd be easiest to show you how to build this cake rather than try to write down every direction, so my friend paul and i made the above video that will walk you through the steps! and the music is by my super cool bro-in-law, john cwiok! everybody check out his tunes. thanks, paul and john!!! also big thanks to eggboy who did his best to be the rafael arutyunyan of this scenario. 

team usa cake

makes 2 loaf cakes

ingredients

6 large eggs, separated (see note)

1/4 c (50g) plus 1 1/4 c (250g) sugar

2 c (450g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

16 oz (450g) almond paste, chopped or torn into pieces

1 tsp kosher salt

1 tb lemon juice

1 tsp almond extract

3 c (384g) all-purpose flour

1 c (240g) whole milk

1 tsp blue liquid food coloring or a few drops of gel

1 tsp red liquid food coloring or a few drops of gel

1/2 c (150g) apricot or raspberry jam

 

Ganache

10 oz semisweet or dark chocolate chips

1 c (240g) heavy whipping cream

 

Topping

Marzipan kneaded with food coloring

Gold sprinkles

clues

preheat the oven to 350ºf. grease two 8” by 12” quarter sheet pans and one 8” by 4” loaf pan and line them with parchment paper that comes at least 2 inches up two of the sides of the pan.

in a large bowl or in a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, beat the egg whites to soft peaks. with the mixer running on medium, gradually add the 1/4 cup of sugar. increase the speed to medium-high and beat to stiff peaks. set them aside (see note). in a large bowl or in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together the butter, almond paste, salt, and remaining 1 1/4 cup sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. reduce the speed to medium and add the yolks, one at a time, beating well after each. beat in the lemon juice and almond extract, then reduce the speed to medium-low and gradually add the flour and milk in 2 or 3 alternating additions. mix to combine. use a rubber spatula to fold in the whites.

transfer 780g of the mixture to one of the quarter sheet pans and use a small offset spatula to spread it out evenly. transfer 525g of the mixture to a separate bowl and fold in the blue food coloring and spread evenly it in the loaf pan. fold the red food coloring into the remaining third and transfer it to the other quarter sheet pan, spreading it out evenly.

bake until the tops are just set and no longer shiny. begin checking for doneness at 15 minutes. the blue layer will need at least 5 more minutes than the other layers since it's quite a bit thicker. let cool in the pans.

refer to the above video on how to assemble, spreading the jam between each of the layers. wrap the loaf firmly in plastic wrap, weigh them down with a big cookbook, and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight. tip: placing the loaf cakes on rectangles of cardboard will make transferring them easier!

trim the edges of the cakes and place them on a wire rack that's been place on top of a sheet pan. make the ganache: place the chocolate chips in a large heat safe bowl or measuring cup. bring the heavy cream to a boil in a medium saucepan (keep a close eye on it and remove it from heat as soon as it starts to boil otherwise it will boil over), pour the hot cream over the chocolate and let it sit for about 30 seconds. then stir it up until you have a smooth ganache. Pour it over the cake, allowing any excess ganache to drip down onto the sheet pan (you can reuse the ganache, reheating it if it firms up), and using an offset spatula to smooth it all over.

Top it with marzipan olympic rings and sprinkles. Enjoy immediately or stick it in the fridge for a few minutes for the ganache to firm up.

Leftovers will keep at room temp for a few days or in the refrigerator for a little longer.

Note: with any recipe that calls for beating something else in the same mixer, I do a few steps to cut down on dishes and ensure that my egg whites don't have any bit of yolk in them, which will cause them not to beat to stiff peaks. I first separate an egg into 2 medium bowls. I then pour the white into my mixer bowl. then I repeat for each egg, adding the whites one by one so that if one gets contaminated, they're not all ruined. and then i beat the whites to stiff peaks first, scoop them out of the mixer bowl, and then use the mixer bowl for the next step. if you use a rubber spatula to get 95 percent of the whites out, there's really no need to rinse the mixer bowl for the yolk step.

-yeh!

eggboy's birthday cake!

in

Hiiii!!! How were your Thanksgivings and Thanksgiving leftovers?? Ours was great, Eggboy completely knocked it out of the park with his annual pumpkin pie. I have never truly freaked out about a pumpkin pie, but this one was subtle and pudding-like, which I promise you is not just code for under seasoned and undercooked. He did indeed omit the cinnamon since mum is allergic, and the center never actually set, but I think those were two of the biggest contributing factors to why I loved it so much. It was creamy and light, not heavy and mashed root-vegetable-y. I can’t stop dreaming of it. This is the recipe he uses, from Sarah! The only other change he made aside from omitting the cinnamon was using more heavy cream instead of creme fraiche, and then I think he also cooked the filling for like three times longer than Sarah says to because he was over in the kitchen stirring the pot for half of the dog show. 

After Thanksgiving we went downtown and I survived my high school reunion!!!! I even remembered everyone’s names (and if I didn’t you’d have thought that I did because I had the liquid confidence of 1.5 margaritas). Everybody is nailing it! Everybody seems happy, has great hair, is doing cool things like designing airplanes/tesla batteries/fancy meat and molding the minds of future generations. It was just like time hadn’t passed and we were back in high school all over again minus the awkward turtles. I’m so glad I went, it was totally worth all of the hours stressing out about my outfit. 

We came home with a suitcase filled with various types of chocolate covered marzipan from both Christkindlmarkt and my all time favorite chocolate shop, Anderson’s, in Richmond, Illinois, which makes their own candy bars. I haven’t had them in like 20 years but now mum lives not too far from them and we went over the weekend and their dark chocolate covered marzipan is exactly how I remember it. 

Now we are home and ready to celebrate Eggboy’s 31st birthday, a.k.a. his reverse Bar Mitzvah, h/t to Drake for that inspiration. Tonight we’re going over to the Eggparents’ for salmon and birthday cake (it is also Eggpop’s birthday!) and tomorrow is Eggboy’s official birthday, so we’ll eat birthday cake for breakfast and then have goulash for dinner. 

Over the weekend I spent quite some time sitting on mum’s couch waiting for commercials to be over because Skate America was on (holy cow Nathan Chen’s short program, holy cow Bradie Tennell, and holy cow Shib Sibs!!!). During these commercial breaks I picked up one of the Vanity Fairs from the coffee table and flipped to a story about three very stylish English sisters that were the daughters of a duke and duchess who had descended from a family that came over from France in, like, the year one thousand. I am pretty much a sucker for any story involving stylish royal people our age (go Meghan!) but my greatest takeaway from this particular article involved their family traditions. It was per tradition that they moved into the 356 room castle when their grandpa passed away, and it was per tradition that they threw elaborate balls for their 18th birthdays, and per tradition, weekends are spent in the country riding horses with their flock of English hound doggos. And when they plant trees they have to envision how they will look in 300 years. 

Suddenly I was hellbent on finding a traditional birthday cake that will be relevant one thousand years from now.

So! I knew it’d be a yellow cake since Eggboy always wants a yellow cake for his birthday and he always makes me one on my birthday. The past couple of years for my birthday he has used the recipe in the Mast Brothers cookbook which he bought me years ago. Admittedly, this has brought on monstrous disasters every time, except for the first time when he made a bunch of random uninformed substitutions that somehow worked out but that he didn’t write down. I always assumed his disasters were just because the amount of pans wasn’t specified and because his baking experience is limited. But then when I tried to bake this cake earlier this week, guess what happened! Total disaster. Crater larger than the Grand Canyon. Expletives all over my texts to Michelle. Angry notes written in pen on the page. 

I'll spare all of the details and just cut to this birthday cake that is sitting in front of me and that I am very happy with and that was last minute made three-tiered because it's fun! It has Mast Brothers' frosting because Eggboy loves it, it is cream cheesy and tangy and good, but I have decided that Sarah's yellow cake, which I made last year, is officially the front runner for becoming our traditional family birthday cake. It's delicious, moist, a true classic, all you could ever want in a birthday cake. Eggboy, consider this my official proposal to make Sarah’s cake + Mast brothers frosting the official family birthday cake. Please and thanks! 

This three-tiered sitch is made of two batches of cake: a full 8" cake on the bottom, and then the 6" tier and 4" tiers make up the second batch. The sprinkles are a mix of India Tree's nature's colors confetti and cylinders, wilton gold pearls, and grocery store sundae sprinkles and chocolate sprinkles. Just call me a sprinkle mixologist. 

***Throws sprinkles in the air and dashes off to go wrap Eggboy's presents***

Hooray!!!!!!!! Happy birthday, Eggboy and Eggpop!!!!!!! 

classic yellow cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting

cake from sarah kieffer's the vanilla bean baking book, frosting based on the mast brothers cookbook

makes one 2-layer 8-inch cake

ingredients

for the cake:

3 large eggs

2 egg yolks

1 tb pure vanilla extract

3/4 c sour cream

1/4 c buttermilk

2 c (284 g) all-purpose flour

1 1/2 c (297 g) sugar

3/4 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 lb (2 sticks; 227 g) unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into 1-inch pieces

for the frosting:

8 ounces (226 g) dark chocolate, chopped

1/2 c (1 sticks; 113 g) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 lb (454g) cream cheese, room temperature

1 tb pure vanilla extract

a good pinch of salt

2 c (226 g) confectioners' sugar

 

clues

for the cake:

adjust an oven rack to the middle position. preheat the oven to 350ºf. butter and flour two 8 by 2-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.

in a medium bowl or liquid measuring cup, whisk the eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, sour cream, and buttermilk.

in a bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt on low until combined. with the mixer running on low, add the butter one piece at a time, beating until the mixture resembles coarse sand. with the mixer still running on low, slowly add half the wet ingredients. increase the speed to medium and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds. with the mixer running on low, add the rest of the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined. increase the speed to medium and beat for 20 seconds (the batter may still look a little bumpy). scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, and use a spatula to mix the batter a few more times.

divide the batter between the prepared pans and smooth the tops. tap the pans gently on the counter 2 times each to help get rid of any bubbles. bake 17 to 22 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through, until the cakes are golden brown and pull slightly away from the sides and a wooden skewer or toothpick inserted in the centers comes out clean.

transfer the pans to a wire rack and let cool for 30 minutes. turn the cakes out onto the rack, remove the parchment paper, and let cool completely. once cool, the cakes can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated overnight or frosted.

for the frosting:

melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in a microwave in 30-second increments, stirring after each.

in  the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, cream together the butter, cream cheese, vanilla, salt, and confectioners' sugar. Add the melted chocolate and mix until smooth. 

layer and frost the cake. enjoy!

-yeh!

Turkey Wild Rice Hotdish

in , , ,

I am so far down the road of sufganiyot testing and hallmark movie watching that I have to remind myself that thanksgiving still hasn’t happened or else I’ll get confused about the turkey cupcakes on my Instagram feed. Still I have no regrets about having moved forcefully in the direction of holiday cheer from the moment that Halloween ended. I mean, let’s hear a round of applause for this bagel macaroni noodle menorah and this narwhal address stamp and the new Sia Christmas album. zooomg. 

We are going to Chicago for the long weekend, where we’ll celebrate Eggboy’s birthday, Stoopie’s birthday, Thanksgiving obviously, and the National Dog Show hosted by Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir. Oh, and my high school reunion, to which I will be wearing the closest thing to adult footie pajamas that Eileen Fisher gift cards can buy. 

I am extremely ready for my Thanksgiving routine, which goes like this:

Wake up to Stoop placing her small dog, Audrey, on my head (Eggboy has been up for hours, chatting with mum and reading the newspaper),

Flop down stairs, pour a coffee, migrate to the couch, struggle for five minutes with mum’s remote controls, and then finally find the Macy’s parade. Sing and dance along when the Camp Broadway kids come on.

Exchange sup dudes with Stoop husband. Alternate between the parade, twitter, pickin my nose, and Audrey being placed on my head until it’s time to oversee Eggboy’s annual pumpkin pie production. (He plans to repeat last year’s success, which consisted of Sarah’s filling and Yossy’s crust.)

Assist with stuffing tasting, vegetable chopping, etc. 

Gush over the sheep dogs during the dog show.

Check Instagram. Crimp Eggboy’s pie, tweet about his progress. Decide if he is a pieboy or not a pieboy this year. 

Ad lib until it’s time to eat and then just keep my head down until it’s clear that everyone’s forgotten about going around the table to say what we’re thankful for. It’s just so mushy 😭😭😭😭😭

Fall asleep in front of a movie, any movie. Maybe Elf this year??

Here is a perfect way to use up your Thanksgiving leftovers, a turkey wild rice hot dish that is topped with leftover stuffing!! It's soo cozy and good, and it's basically a thanksgiving sandwich that you can eat from a bowl. The thing about this wild rice hotdish though is that it should be made anytime during the winter months, not just when you have leftovers. Around here we pretend like it’s a little more of a grownup hotdish since it has ~local wild rice~ adding bite and nutrition, but it’s just as buttery and creamy and rich as, say, its tater tot counterpart. You can totally sub out the turkey for roasted chicken or ground beef or a vegan meat substitute (as so many of you did with the tater tot hotdish)!! And when it’s not stuffing season—which is sad to think about because stuffing should be eaten at all times of the year, right??—go ahead and top this with the traditional crushed cracker topping. Eggmom uses saltines! I bet ritz would be good too. Or cheez-its. Mmmmm.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!!!!

Turkey Wild Rice Hotdish with Stuffing (AKA Thanksgiving Leftover Hotdish)

makes 6 - 8 servings

ingredients

3/4 c (135g) wild rice, rinsed and drained

2 c (480g) water

Kosher salt

6 tb (84g) unsalted butter

2 carrots, finely chopped

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

1 large onion, finely chopped

3/4 c (95g) all-purpose flour

3 c (715g) whole milk

2 tb vegetable, or chicken soup mix (i prefer the orrington farms brand, but something similar, like a bouillon cube or better than bouillon or a homemade bouillon will work)

Black pepper

1 tsp dried rosemary, chopped

4 c (about 515g) cooked shredded roasted turkey*

4 c leftover stuffing (I like this recipe)*

*Since it's impossible to predict exact leftover amounts, don't fret if you have a little more or a little less stuffing or turkey! These amounts are just a ballpark.

Leftover cranberry sauce, for servinng

clues

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.

In a medium saucepan, combine the wild rice, water, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 30 minutes, until al dente. Drain the rice and set it aside.

To make the creamed soup, in a large pot, melt 6 tablespoons of butter over medium high heat. Add the carrots, celery, onion, and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring, until soft, about 12-15 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook for another minute. Stir in half of the milk and cook, stirring, until thickened. Stir in the remaining milk and cook, stirring, until very thick. Add the soup mix, a bunch of turns of black pepper, rosemary, and salt to taste. Taste and adjust seasoning as desired.

In a 9 x 13 casserole dish, 1/3 soup on the bottom, then 1/2 the rice, and 1/2 the turkey. Repeat and then top with the remaining 1/3 of the soup mixture. Top with stuffing and bake for 45 minutes, until bubbly. If the stuffing is getting too browned on top, cover with foil.

Serve with leftover cranberry sauce. 

deep dish pizza and some other stuff!

in , ,

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!