Green Pepper Pizza Sauce

This is my mom's favorite recipe for pizza sauce -- inspired by the sauce that was served at her high school hangout (I won't mention the year to preserve her modesty). Jim has actually suggested using jarred sauce for making pizza but after my look of abject horror, he quickly backed off of that position. Now he always requests this sauce when we make pizza - luckily it freezes well.

Ingredients:

• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• 1 onion, finely chopped
  
• 1 green pepper, finely chopped
  
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 6 oz. can tomato paste
• 1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
  
• 2 oz. beer
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
• 1/2 tsp. parsley
• 1 tsp. basil

1. Chop the onion and the green pepper. I usually use my food processor to help finely chop the veggies.
   
2. Mince the garlic (or smash with the side of a big knife, depending on how aggressive you're feeling.) Heat the oil over medium heat and add the garlic until softened (not browned - if the garlic looks brown, you've already burned it).
   
3. Add the chopped onion and pepper, lower the heat to low, and cook until softened. (About 3-4 minutes).
4. Add the tomato paste and mix it with the veggies.
   
5. Add the tomato sauce and use the beer to clean the remaining sauce from the can before adding to the pot.
   
6. Add the seasonings and let the sauce simmer on low heat.
   
7. Taste the sauce to see if additional seasonings are needed. The sauce will develop more and more flavor as it simmers -- let it go at least 30 minutes, but longer is better. Keep an eye on it, stir occasionally, and make sure it does not boil.
   

I know it seems like I'm adding a lot of tomato paste into the recipe, and that's true. But for pizza you want a thick sauce that is going to stick to your pizza. While it is a lot of paste, it makes for a great consistency pizza sauce.

This makes about 4 1/2 to 5 cups of sauce. The sauce freezes really well, I put small servings in a plastic container, let them cool on the counter (if they are hot when they go into the freezer, the steam from the sauce will form an ice layer on top), and freeze. This makes enough for about 3 meals.

Keep in mind, this post comes from Jane. Jim is the obsessive compulsive one when it comes to measuring things and coming from a big Italian family, we just add spices until it looks/tastes right. I did my best to list the correct amount of spices, but if you taste it and it needs more of any particular flavor, add it in. Depending on the pungency of the onions and garlic, I also occasionally find myself adding a bit of onion or garlic powder as well.

This is a great pizza sauce recipe -- the green pepper gives a great slightly spicy flavor that complements great pizza crust (watch for Jim's blog post shortly). Sammy, however, was unimpressed.