Grilled Tomato Sauce From Steven Raichlen Like soup, tomato sauce is one of the dishes you're least likely to think of grilling. But there is a powerful reason to try this sauce. Beyond the mere novelty factor, grilling imparts a gutsy smoke flavor to the sauce and heightens the natural sweetness of the vegetables. Don't take just my word for it. For thousands of years, Mexicans have grilled tomatoes, onions and peppers to make rich-tasting salsas. I have adapted the technique to make an exceptionally flavorful tomato sauce. Serve the sauce over grilled polenta, with any simple grilled fish, or with just about any cooked pasta. Makes about 3 1/2 cups. 5 lucious, ripe red tomatoes 2 - 2 1/4 pounds total, cut in half crosswise, and stem ends removed 1 medium size white onion, peeled and cut into quarters 1 rib celery 4 cloves garlic, peeled and skewered on a wooden toothpick or small bamboo skewer 3 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil 1 tsp. oregano 1/2 tsp. hot pepper flakes 1 bay leaf 6 fresh basil leaves coarse salt (Kosher or Sea salt) freshly ground black pepper 1/4 to 3/4 cup chicken stock, vegetable stock or water Cook the tomatoes, onions, celery and garlic in greased and preheated grill (George Foreman grill) until nicely browned. You may need to cook the vegetables in more than one batch. Transfer the grilled vegetables and let cool. Finely chop the onions, celery and garlic by hand or in a food processor. If using a food processor, run machine in spurts. Heat olive oil in large non-reactive sauce pan over medium heat. Add the chopped onion, celery and garlic, oregano, hot pepper flakes and bay leaf and cook until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Coarsely puree tomatoes and juices with the basil in a food processor. Add the tomato mixture to the sauce pan, with the vegetables. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, then let sauce simmer gently until thick and richly flavored 8-10 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. The sauce should be thick but pourable. If it is too thick, add a little stock or water. Remove and discard the bay leaf. The sauce can be refrigerated, covered up to 4 days. Or frozen for up to 2 months. Let the sauce come to room temperature then reheat it in a non-reactive sauce pan over medium heat, stirring often.

I am ready to purchase a 36" rangetop with grill, however I'm not sure which one(sounds familiar).All units are winners, but I can only pick one. The Blue Star has the most power and great burners, however the grill doesnÂt have ceramic infa-red burner(love to grill),how much should that matter? Capital has very respectable 19,000 btu's and 18,000 btu c i/r burner, not sure about reliability and service. Ge Monogram has least power 18,000 btu,and has 14,000 btu c i/r burner and matches my over the island hood. I have noticed that the new Ge Monogram grill looks very similar to Capital, is Capital now making Ge's rangetops? Are the ceramic Infa-red burners reliable and easy to keep clean.? Thanks so much for you insight and experiences

I'm finally getting around to updating this post. The service guy came with the proper screwdriver and adjusted all by one of my simmers down to the lowest possible setting without having the burner blow out and start clicking to reignite. I originally thought that this adjustment affected my HI setting, making it slightly lower, so I asked him to leave one rear burner unadjusted to be used for rapid boiling of large pots of water. My Capital contact called back to ensure that the adjustment had been made and he spent a lot of time with me on the phone while I checked the burners and the control knob, etc. and now I understand that the screw that adjusts the simmer ONLY controls the simmer and it is impossible for it to affect the flow of gas at the hi setting. I don't remember exactly what he said, but apparently there are seperate valves for different settings and the screw behind the knob only adjusts the simmer. I've also learned that by design, the entire knob is not meant to control the flame height; only about 1/2 of the knob is able to control the flame and the low half has no impact on the flame height and is not supposed to. I think that marking the knob as if it has an effect is silly, since the mid-point SHOULD be a visual clue that it is your medium flame and not your simmer flame, but the bottom line is that you have to stoop down to check flame height if you want a medium flame and can not rely on the knob markings except for Ignite, HI and LOW (low flame will be achieved way before the low mark on the knob, but it sill still be Low so it doesn't matter.) Now, about the grates and tipping. Capital has confirmed that pots can tip and they are trying to redesign the grates to solve this potential safety issue, of which they were unaware until I complained of my experience. Either I'm the only one who this has happened to (and it will happen every time I cook with my smaller diameter pots unless I align the handle with a long support), or I'm the only one who bothered to call about it. It turns out that the fix is not as simple as one might hope. If you have a Capital rangetop, you can see that where the longer supports approach the burner cover, that the holes for the gas are of much smaller diameter. This is to prevent the supports from getting too hot when the burner is set to the Highest setting, and becoming damaged and ultimately rusting. All the other gas holes are much larger holes, and this is because there are no grate supports close. So, they can't simply have 4 more supports come closer to the center without considering the extreme extra heat that those supports would get, and still have the 19K BTU at HI that they want to offer. Bottom line, they are working on it and I'm confident they will find a solution before too many months and I will be able to have safer grates! While I was not entirely happy with my few months of slight buyer's remorse, I am very impressed with the ultimate response I finally got from Capital, especially with the fact that they are addressing the grate issue which I think it HUGE! Do I wish I had a different rangetop? Not anymore, because no one else offered an 8 burner option and my issues are either resolved as much as possible or are being worked on.

cjc123, sabjimata, flwrs-n-co, jkom51, mtnrdredux thanks! We are really enjoying the new space. It is so much more functional and easy to work in. Ginger25 and jenhp: "Blizzard" is warmer than the pure white or organic white from Caesarstone. I think it works better with the rusty Danby marble than those purer whites. Here are some closeups of the Caesarstone, as requested (these are in artificial light): You have to get REALLY close up (3 inches in this case) to see the fine speckles. From farther back but as close as a foot, it reads solid white: Elba1, the uppers are 37 inches tall. The trim between the cabinets and ceiling is under 2 inches, just enough to tie the cabinets to a little bit of a crooked ceiling. There is also a 1 inch light rail underneath the uppers, to hide the under cabinet lights. The ceiling is 8 feet. I thought about incorporating some glass, but I wanted to avoid breaking up the space, for a more contemporary look. If my ceilings were higher, I would have considered a top glass section as well!