The link showed me a page with a bunch of different tiles on it, I think all Jennifer Garner. Which one is it?

Hmmm, the link’s working for me.🤷‍♀️ It’s Jennifer Garner’s Zoodles and Tomato Sauce (3-ingredient from Marcella Hazan). Curious what you’d say about the butter she used.

Just in case, here‘s a screen shot from the video.

And the recipe…

Five TBSP does sound like a lot with one can of tomatoes--I couldn't make Instagram work so googled it and found it on Facebook where the caption said she used the amount in the recipe-- but with nothing else holding the sauce together, I get it, I suppose. I guess butter instead of oil makes it taste meatier or something? Of course, there's also the "pat" in the zucchini. I would have used what I call "cooking quality EVOO" for the flavor. What threw me more was the lumps of onion swimming around in the sauce. I guess the point is easy to strain (as in just pull out the onion) sauce rather than a ragout. 'Course, I love zoodles, but not tomato sauce on squash (zuch or spag squash). It's an odd recipe, IMHO. Really, I think it's a got the attachment from the sponsors and have to use it kind of thing on JG's part.

BTW, my very favorite for zoodles is to do them on the biggest shape (udon?) on my Paderno, and dress with just lemon juice and poppy seeds. Total yum.

That screenshot looks like 3 sticks of butter = 24 tablespoons!

plllog, I’ve heard about Marcela Hazan’s simple sauce, but I’d want more than just tomatoes, onion and butter. I do think butter would be tastier than oil, but not what appears to be the THREE STICKS OF BUTTER Jennifer used in the photo I posted.

The caption on the screenshot also says 5 TBSP. Like they knew it looked wrong, or maybe she goofed, I'm not sure. It doesn't look like standard sticks to me, but it also seems like it could be more than 5 T. It's only ”pretend” cooking after all, and selling KitchenAid.

I can't view Instagram but the video's on YouTube. I thought the recipe looked weird. No seasoning or herbs and the onions were left whole floating about in the tomatoes. I don't know this person or the series. Is it meant to be a spoof?

JG is a famous actor. The recipe, however, is credited to Marcella Hazan, who is an equally famous cook and author, whose recipes are generally highly regarded.

I've now found the Marcella Hazan recipe. It uses 2.5 oz of butter. In the image above that doesn't look like 3 sticks of butter to me. Compared against the size of the onion the pieces appear much smaller. Recipe says 5 tbsp. 1 tbsp would be about 1/2 oz giving you 2.5 oz.

The onion is indeed added in one chunk. My parsimonious hatred of wasting food rebels at the idea of throwing out the onion afterwards. I'd probably blend it in.

Having Googled JG I find the only thing she was in which I've seen is Dallas Buyers' Club. I don't remember her.

I agree the butter sticks look smaller but still more than 5 T. to me. The onion she used was very large and halved, as instructed in the recipe from Marcella Hazan. I don’t think the videos are meant as spoofs, though she does add some humor. There’s one of her making Ina Garten’s Beef Bourguignon. She doubles the recipe, including the Cognac that really flames up when she ignited it. I find her down to earth and fun.

Looking at the photo I posted, could that be a fourth piece of butter in the pot at the top…partially submerged?

Her flaming Cognac…

I agree--I don't think it's a spoof. More of showing normal people problems by fancy actor who's cute when she has problems and can express her enthusiasm for trying new things. (I still don't like zucchini with tomato sauce--I put it in my spaghetti sauce, but I don't like a zucchini dish with the acidic, umami, dominating tomatoes hiding the zucchini and being too wet. JG seems like an ordinary person who cooks for her family, but isn't what we in this group would call "a cook". The spiralizer was new to her, though you can buy pre-spiralized veg at stores she's likely to shop at. I don't think she was pretending on that part (though she's a good enough actor that we'd probably never know). Busy life person who doesn't even notice things not on her list is believable. :)

Chloebud, you're right! That is a fourth stick of butter. Is it possible that these are single tablespoon sticks and there are five? I don't think so. Three was stretching it. Maybe the caption was for 'it won't look like this in your reality?"

No! Wait a minute. I was thinking about this all wrong. When I saw the three sticks I was thinking about how I cut sticks in thirds long ways for pie crusts. But then I was less sure because of the cross-section. And then the fourth made me assume a fifth. But I think I was right the first time but that she was using the shorter wider sticks, that come in the flat package rather than the double cube package. That cut to 5 TBSP in length and cut in half, both ways, would give that square cross-section and length. Which was what I was thinking in the first place when I thought it could be it, before getting bogged down in the details of the closeup.

It's not like JG has never cooked before. She has to know that 3-4-5 sticks of butter was wrong for so many reasons!

“But I think I was right the first time but that she was using the shorter wider sticks, that come in the flat package rather than the double cube package.”

Could be but it sure looks like more than 5 T. You have a good point; it’s not like she‘s without cooking experience. I’m sure she knows 3-4 sticks of butter is crazy wrong! I should read the comments in the video to see if anyone else asked about it.

The sauce itself is surprisingly good, but you must use a good canned tomato. There is a surprising sort of alchemy in the ingredients that may surprise some.

Those aren't sticks of butter, they are cut up pices of butter. When you compare the pieces to the onion and whole tomatoes, the butter is smaller than both. A whole stick of butter would be much larger than both. Also, I watched the video, and she tosses the pieces in with one hand- if they were whole sticks, her hand would be quite large, lol.

She probably just cuts her butter into sticks, and didn't cut them into smaller cubes.

Right, Gooster, I can see how good quality tomatoes are especially key in this case. There are some very good reviews, such as…

”A bright, velvety tomato sauce with a rich roundness from the butter. The butter doesn’t saw off the edges of the tomatoes’ tanginess in the way that sugar does; instead it complements the brightness and makes it shine.”

Also, some reviews mentioned the flavor was lacking. Guess I might do a test run since online reviews can be iffy, but Marcella Hazan’s usually a good source.

Oooh! I hope you try it! And with the flat box butter cut lengthwise!

Re the lack of flavor reviews….well….duh. I have, like, six kinds of butter. Ones for general baking, ones for low water content (high butterfat) baking, ones for best flavor on the table, etc. Cheap, plain wrap, extra low butterfat butter has no flavor and little body.

Tomatoes are variable always. From major canners, however, they're regularized for things like acidity. They also have salt. That's all. They're machine processed and can be bland as paste. REAL San Marzano tomatoes, as called for by Marcella, the Italian woman who started an Italian cooking school and wrote all those cookbooks, and who, I've read, was trying to reconstruct the flavors of her childhood in Italy, are ”Cento [the only certified American brand] Certified San Marzano Whole Peeled Plum Tomatoes are grown in the Sarnese Nocerino area of Italy, renowned for its especially fruitful soil as a result of its proximity to Mount Vesuvius. Our San Marzano tomatoes are certified by an independent third-party agency to ensure their superior quality. Perfect for making homemade sauces, our tomatoes are hand-picked only when ripe, giving them a distinctively sun-ripe and sweet taste.” (from Cento website) and include the famous basil leaf. ”San Marzano” words can appear on other brands of tomatoes, but in Europe it's a protected appellation. The real ones say ”Pomodoro San Marzano dell'agro Sarnese-Nocerino. Also, there will always be the official consortium logo, and finally the red and yellow PDO logo will be present.”

Besides getting the right basic ingredients, there's what you're used to. If you're used to a bucket of herbs, sausage and/or other meat, lots of garlic and onions, a plain tomato sauce celebrating the flavor of the tomatoes, will be bland compared to expectation.

Good point, plllog, regarding what you’re used to. If I do a test run I’d likely halve the recipe. LOL, with 2.5 T. of butter!

I read some of the reviews, and several asked about the amount of butter. No response from JG in the ones I read.🤷‍♀️

I would never alter the Marcella recipe before trying - as written by her.

I remember making her bolognese sauce for a thread here once upon a time. That recipe had the simplest ingredients and four pages of cooking directions to create the alchemy. I was so impressed with that simple recipe that I can still remember it today. It had to be cooked as she explained for the magic to happen, I believe.

I love this book.

You inspired me. I was buying oil for latkes and saw the Cento cans, so picked one up on grins. Not for zucchini. But I think I have some flat box Strauss butter in the freezer. :) I don't know if I'll try it, but I might.

So I checked Wikipedia. There it quotes Marcella as saying when she was first married and living in New York, and didn't know how to cook, she often had to kind of invent her own way of doing things to get the result she was looking for. That explains that must do it exactly her way part. :)

When I've made it, I've used Cento tomatoes (especially now, in offseason). I can see people thinking the flavor is lacking, especially if they are used to American style sauces with lots of meat, garlic, herbs, chili, sofritto and more garlic. It simply celebrates the tomato.

Those orange looking sticks are not butter - they are the four pieces of zucchini. I'm not sure why she cut them into rectangular sticks, however.

Lars, did you mean the photo I posted? The pot just has tomatoes, a halved onion and butter…no zucchini. She put the zucchini through the spiralizer.

Before I put the book away I took photo of Marcella’s Bolognese sauce recipe. It is so yummy!

Thank you, Joan!👍🏻

I am going to make the butter, onion, tomato recipe tonight by way of an experiment. Note that the can in the recipe is a large one, 280 oz. 5 tbs butter doesn't seem so much if that is taken into account. I'm making half quantity for two of us and weighing the butter, not doing it by volume. This is how it looks before cooking. My onion was quite a large one, ca. 3" diameter. That's 1.25 oz of butter. I'm certain the original pic above does not show whole sticks of butter but rather shows pieces of butter.

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Floral, yes, a 28-oz. can of tomatoes for a whole recipe. I’ll be curious to hear your results.

Sorely disappointed, I'm afraid. Very bland, verging on tasteless. I used Mutti tomatoes, organic butter, de Cecco pasta and an organic local onion. It could do with a lot more butter imo. The onion added nothing imo. It tasted little better than just putting neat passata on the pasta.

Interesting. I did see some reviews that mentioned ”lackluster” while others were very positive. Guess I’ll have to try it.🤷‍♀️

Oh I am sorry it wasn’t to your liking. I made that recipe a few times and loved it.

There's something odd going on. I followed the recipe to the letter. But just couldn't taste much in the result. We ate it but only not to waste it. Maybe your tomatoes are different. Mine were Italian canned as per the recipe. Did you use fresh? That would make a difference but fresh were not specified.

I've made sauce from fresh Romas many times. By the end of cooking, I find them indistinguishable from high quality canned. BUT the Mutti tomatoes here are not the ones grown in the lava fields. They say "Parma" and are known to be high quality, however, San Marzanos, with the badge and appellation, are a different thing. And they're generally packed with a bay leaf, which may also add a certain zing. I don't know if that's where the disconnect is, but with so few ingredients, it's likely. Also, perhaps, Marcella's onion was stronger and juicier. It's an old recipe, and produce all over the world is getting sweeter.

As to '"only not to waste it", you could have sprinkled on any of parm, black pepper, red pepper flakes, crushed garlic, onion powder, fresh thyme or basil, etc. ,right into the dishes, and made it tastier if iit wasn't appealing as is. I can't imagine there was anything wrong with it other than wanting more punch.

Obviously I could very easily have made it much tastier. I often cook and eat many pasta dishes. But I wanted to try the recipe exactly as published because it seemed so peculiar. As you can see in the photo we did add parmesan. The type of tomato is not specified in the recipe other than being Italian, which mine were. Certainly it's not stipulated that they be DOP and/or San Marzano. (San Marzano is a cultivar not an origin.)

Ah, yes, in Joan's book, it does just say Italian plum tomatoes. In the version in the OP it says San Marzano, and I think JG used Cento San Marzano. The ones certified from the lava fields, as l posted above: ”Pomodoro San Marzano dell'agro Sarnese-Nocerino. Also, there will always be the official consortium logo, and finally the red and yellow PDO logo will be present.” I do think that's what was meant, specifically because of the flavor, but I do understand why you went with Mutti.

I did buy a can of Cento to try it, too, and I'll try to do so soon so we can compare.

As to making it tastier, I meant after you'd dished it up and were so disappointed that you were eating it not to be wasteful. It's never too late to doctor it! I'm sure the parm helped.

So, Christmas Eve and Christmas/First Light dinner have been cancelled due to others’ health issues and other stresses. Today was trying to be rainy, but not succeeding. Perfect time to play with pasta. :)

I tried to stay as close to Joan's picture of the recipe in the book as possible, so I measured out 2 cups of the organic Cento tomatoes, which was all the tomatoes and a good amount of the puree. I did also put the basil leaf in the pot since it's such a common part of San Marzano canned tomatoes. The onion was a bit bigger than a baseball, organic from the farm delivery, and I tasted a sliver to make sure it was pungent and juicy. The butter was Straus Organic (California), 85% fat, like European butters. In the flat box, with the larger cross-section. I thought I had some salted in the fridge, but I seem to have used it up, so this was unsalted from the freezer. As I cut it, it started to shatter a bit, but it looks a lot like JG's, as I suspected it would be. (Nice to get one right!). I was giving it a stir at about the 5 minute mark, and remembered the unsaltedness, and the fact that the only seasoning in the recipe is salt, so I gave it a good grind of sea salt from the mill by the stove.

See the short fat Straus butter from the long box next to the Clover butter from the double cube box (for cmparison only). The onion in the foreground is the one I used. There's my ”three ingredients”. The Staus butter also has a precise fit on the TBSP measure on the wrapper. It's exact.

I had the hardest time getting the ends of the butter sticks to show. Sauce everywhere and still you can't see the square cross-section. The two actual sticks are legit quarters of the 5 Tbsp. They look huge in the pot, but they aren't.

This is sideways. Just a different look. The two sticks are the same size. Weird perspective.

Simmered as told for 45 min. I was not about to make gnocchi or extruded pasta this afternoon, and I thought the best test would be spaghetti. Marcella also mentions penne or rigatoni, but the little pasta I have is mostly weird (made with beans or ancient grains or whatnot). I had a single one pound box of Italian whole durum wheat spaghetti which seemed the best choice. 1-1.5 lbs. was called for. I am proud to say, good luck was with me, and I got the spaghetti just right. Fully cooked but al dente. Whole wheat goes from raw in the center to overcooked and mushy in about 20 seconds, or so it seems. I think it's thinner than the spaghetti in Marcella's heyday, but there was only enough sauce for about 2/3-3/4 of the pasta. It all coated very nicely, though, and I stopped before I put too much in.

The red spot is a solid piece of tomato which I missed breaking up. There's no excess sauce at all. Just enough to coat what's in there.

It's delicious! As several of our friends said it had been when they had tried the recipe. It seems so odd that my experience was so different from Floral's, but I have to think it was the tomatoes. The Cento San Marzano, at least the puree, tastes good right out the can, which is different from the high quality California canned tomatoes I generally use. Those don't taste bad, but not yummy. It might be the basil leaf or the salt, but I think it's really the tomatoes. I think ours from California are also more acidic. Floral's and my other ingredients seem as close as one can get, at least by description, though maybe my onion was juicier. It doesn't matter for a highly flavored, cook for five hours, ragout, to have the San Marzanos, but the California tomatoes are like a quickie pomodoro. Which lesson I will carry forward. I don't generally care for pomodoro, but I might like it if it were made with real San Marzanos.

What I can say for sure is that the onion flavor is in the sauce. Not only can one taste it, if one knows the difference, but the onion was greatly shrunken and the sauce expanded, leaving me to believe that a significant amount of liquid transferred. I suppose there might be some trapped air from the simmering but it couldn't be that much. One could see the onion halves sinking. As I watched, I could see why putting the cut edge on the bottom of the pot was important for coaxing the juice out. I used an enamelled cast iron, 2 qt., though I don't know if the pot makes a difference.

Sunken, played out onion in rising tide of sauce.

The pasta, plain out of the water tastes something like cardboard. Wtih the three ingredient sauce it's delicious. The butter is noticeable in the way it coats the pasta, but it doesn't taste particularly greasy. I think the salt is important. I did taste the sauce mid-cooking to check the salt level. I don't use a lot of salt. The tomato puree out the can does taste a bit salty to me, but I do think it needed the salt I added.. It doesn't taste too salty.

So, besides the pasta (of which I had two servings (lots of voids in the bowl—not an extraordinary quantity of pasta, total) with my salad), there's another proof of its delicioushood: It was lick the pot worthy! (With finger as carrier.)

To dress it, I used the opened Romano because I didn't want to open the Parmesan just for a quick sprinkle, but I did taste it thoughtfully before adding the cheese.

So, for me, at least, the final proof of a good recipe is how it tastes cold out of the fridge. This one passes the test. Much better than the kind of pomodoro I don't like. On the delishitude meter, it's unexciting cold and probably better rewarmed, but it's tasty enough to keep eating.

Now I’m really convinced I need to try it. plllog, your butter looks closer to the 5 T. in the recipe than the pic I posted. And thanks for the detailed review! Things are a little crazy right now, so I’ll have to wait until the holiday winds down a bit more to try this. “Delicioushood” and “lick the pot worthy” are enough for me!😁

Well since that beautiful book is still handy, I will share Marcella’s words on tomatoes and pasta. From the Fundamentals chapter.

Thanks, Joan! That was an interesting read. Some is a little out of date, but it's great to have an insight into what Marcella was working with. My Cento tomatoes were whole, but packed in puree rather than tomato juice. Whereas the California tomatoes are packed in juice, with maybe a little puree. Given the great results, I'm not worried about the differences. The fresh tomatoes around here still haven't recovered since the pandemic. We used to get some really good fresh ones...

I've just put the 30th anniversary edition into my Amazon cart. :)

Chloebud, I hope it comes out as well for you when you get a chance to try! I was surprised at how much I liked it. I still have to make a a big pot of ragout (i.e., "spaghetti sauce") for the freezer. This project reminded me, however, of a sauce a friend taught me when I was living abroad, with a very limited kitchen, which was a one meal (four servings) thing, too. That was a lot of onion and garlic sautéed with herbs and pepper, random vegetables, then tomato paste and wine...or wine and tomato paste, added. It was edible bordering on not too bad. :) But it was quick and easy and nutritious. And wine. This Marcella recipe only needs a can of tomatoes. Even there, I always had butter and onions, though no chance on the San Marzanos. Here, there are Italian brands as well as Cento, and the possibility of fresh, though if they aren't in the garden (not in my garden!). Therefore, fresh defeats the point of just throwing it together--though the recipe might be really good for highlighting the flavor of fresh ripe tomatoes.

It's the TOMATOES!

I was clearing containers out of the fridge this morning and decided to use up the plain spaghetti and the leftover San Marzano puree from measuring out the 2 cups for the recipe. I have better things to do today than making lunch (just now i'm on a feet up, recharge the body break), so I put the pasta in a Corelle pho bowl, dumped in the puree, sprinkled with seasoned pepper, garlic pepper and Italian herb blend, added some grated Romano (but not enough to finish that off, dagnabit!) and zapped it. It was delicious! And I finger-licked the container from the puree because it was worth it. When I was making the recipe, I thought the Organic Cento tomatoes seemed "cookeder" than most. Today, I'm sure of it.

The three ingredient sauce recipe works because/if the tomatoes are that good. And for a quickie, one meal's worth situation, the sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, zap method works as well, given how cooked tasting the tomatoes are. It's a little miracle. One worth keeping in one's back pocket.

“It's the TOMATOES!”

👍🏻!!!🍅

ETA - Just adding this recipe into the mix. I saw it some years ago and never tried it.🤷‍♀️ Clearly really good tomatoes would be key here, too.

https://www.marthastewart.com/978784/one-pan-pasta

Strangely… for those who know of Smitten Kitchen on blog and Instagram, this morning she mentioned the Marcella Hazan’s 3 ingredient tomato sauce for pasta. She said main ingredient was butter and she was still on the fence.

I like Smitten Kitchen blog. So, I think there's a lot of ”rightness” involved. For instance, since Marcella said 1-1.5 lbs. of pasta, I assumed the sauce was meant to be used in the Italian way of just enough to coat the pasta. Unlike the ragout I learned from our Italian family friend, which is also good eaten as a stew or layered in lasagna, the three ingredient sauce is most effective stuck to the pasta. That's what the butter is for (though SK might also wonder at the amount of animal fat involved). I wouldn't sit down and just eat a dish of it, like I sometimes do with the ragout we call, and use as, ”spaghetti sauce”. (Please pardon the French spelling—it's to disambiguate from a brand of down market jarred pasta sauce.) Americans are known for wanting a strong sauce that stands on its own, and use a lot more in proportion to the just coat the pasta, Italian way. That could be a big disconnect for some American cooks. (I generally sauce pasta the Italian way but with big chunks of meat and veg from the ragout, so kind of in between, really.)

ETA: And she used American canned tomatoes (as Floral said, without certification, ”San Marzano” is just a name).

ETA again: No matter what kind of sauce, the pasta should be added to the warm sauce in the pot, not dumped on a plate with a pool of sauce on top, unless it's an advertisement for jarred sauce. I had assumed SK had done the latter for the pretty picture, but if so, it's misleading. If it's the way she was eating it, it wouldn't have been at its best even with tomatoes from the Visuvian lava fields.

“Americans are known for wanting a strong sauce that stands on its own, and use a lot more in proportion to the just coat the pasta, Italian way.”

LOL, plllog, that would definitely be a certain DH! He also likes to make what I call ”salad soup” with a lot of dressing and a little lettuce.🥴

neely, I also like Smitten Kitchen and will check it…thanks!

neely, I noticed in Deb’s video the butter amount does look more like 5 T.

https://smittenkitchen.com/2010/01/tomato-sauce-with-butter-and-onions/

Thanks for the link. When I'd found the page before, the video didn't play. Probably different device. Wrong kind of pasta (it's too thick and crevice-y), but at least in the video she does sauce it in the pan. I wish my butter pictures were better. IRL they looked a lot like JG's.