Tips and Tricks from a bonafide (partial) Italian:
- If you're using canned tomatoes, always use the Italian type, not the regular round ones. The quality of your sauce will above all depend on the quality of the tomatoes you use.
- Always add salt at the end of the recipe. Taste the sauce first! As it cooks down, it becomes more concentrated--and the less salt you will probably need.
- Most tomato sauces (unless of course they are no-cook) taste best if they have simmered for at least two hours.
- Simmer the sauce on low heat. You'll ruin it if you try to cook it down too quickly.
- Don't go easy on the herbs. Bland sauce is the pits.
- Add a bit of sugar to taste. (Yes, sugar.) I know it sounds weird, but it's the secret ingredient, short of adding a teaspoonful of human blood.
Cooking sauce ,like making love, involves attention to detail, time (the longer the better), patience and a worshipful attitude.
That's why we Italians are the authority on both. :P