Make hay while the sun shines. Well, actually, find someone else to make hay and put up some tomato sauce if it's that sunny. Right now, tomatoes are everywhere, delicious and cheap. Simmer their flavorful juiciness into sauce and feast now or pull this time machine out of the freezer in bleak midwinter. To make fresh tomatoes into sauce, plunge them into boiling water until the skins split, which takes a minute, and then shock them in an ice water bath. The skins will peel off easily when you take out the cores.But in winter, this sauce is just as delicious made with canned San Marzano tomatoes. This is not a time to insist on a local, or even domestic, product. DOP San Marzano plum tomatoes are legitimate heirlooms: the first seed was a gift from Peru to Naples (best gift ever?). They are grown in volcanic soil which acts like a water filter. So for under two bucks a can or per pound for fresh, this sauce has frugal immigrant credibility, too.
No food holds a stronger myth of secrecy than Marinara sauce, but truthfully, there are no secret ingredients. The simpler the better. Maybe you think I'm a heretic for even putting onions in my red gravy, and what am I even thinking with the spices and wine and honey? Marinara sauce is a treatment for tomatoes, not a silly concoction, so add the enhancements your family likes. There may not be a secret ingredient, but there is one unbreakable, unshakable rule for this sauce. It cannot be rushed.
Ah, Frank and Felicia Galasso, Italian retirees, our first real babysitters. Frank sat on the stoop and grew eggplants and had dentures and had his own bathroom that smelled like aftershave (which to me smelled like man). Felicia had a grandma hairdo and was barely taller than her stove, which is where she worked all day creating smells with sausage and peppers and chicken. The house became a pizelle factory around Christmas. They had a front room with red carpet and white marble everything else. They adored me and Patrick.
I was looking around my books and trying to find a Catholic theologian to comment on Italian food (Rome, right?) and I came up with nothing. The reason Marinara sauce has been made legendary by Italian grandmothers and not Vatican theologians is that the former understand that the pursuit of good things requires unconditional love and the latter, though well intentioned, want the family of the faithful to change instead of feeding it and watching it grow. Raising children takes time-- you can't jack up the heat or add tomato paste. Yes, grandmothers nag, but consider that just stirring the pot every hour or so. Grandmothers wait for the family to show up for dinner, and while they wait, they cook. We need more theologians who are grandmothers.
Makes 2 quarts and can be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, etc.
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 pound thick-sliced pancetta (about 3 slices), diced
1 medium onion (about 1 cup), chopped
6 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1/2 cup red wine or sweet vermouth
3 28-ounce cans whole peeled tomatoes or 6 pounds fresh skinned tomatoes
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning (or 1 teaspoon each dried basil, oregano and parsley)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 pound thick-sliced pancetta (about 3 slices), diced
1 medium onion (about 1 cup), chopped
6 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1/2 cup red wine or sweet vermouth
3 28-ounce cans whole peeled tomatoes or 6 pounds fresh skinned tomatoes
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning (or 1 teaspoon each dried basil, oregano and parsley)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon honey
Heat the olive oil in a heavy pot over medium heat. Add the pancetta and onion and sauté for 10-15 minutes over medium heat, or until the onion is translucent and the pancetta has rendered some fat. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 3-4 more minutes. Add the wine and allow it to simmer until it has reduced by half. If any browned bits have accumulated, scrape the bottom of the pot with a flat wooden spatula, using the wine to deglaze the pot. 
Next, add the tomatoes and their juice. To do this, you have three options. 1. Puree the tomatoes in a food processor until chunky or roughly chop them with a knife. 2. Add the tomatoes to the pot whole and use a hand-held potato masher to break them up into pieces. 3. Crush the tomatoes with your hands as they go into the pot. Watch out: the tomatoes may squirt out their juice at you unexpectedly. If you're cooking with friends or your kids, you may fall into a heap of giggles. 
Stir the tomatoes into the sauce and raise the heat so the tomato sauce begins to simmer. Add the herbs, salt, pepper, and honey. To make the sauce sweeter (like a jar of commercially available sauce), add more honey. To make the sauce a little spicy, add crushed red pepper flakes. Fresh herbs wilt unattractively unless added at the very end, so it is best to use dried herbs, which have a more concentrated flavor than fresh. Simmer the sauce between 3-6 hours, covered. The sauce can also simmer in a 200-250°F oven. After a long simmer, the sauce will not need to be thickened, which is the only purpose of tomato paste. If you do not have enough time to simmer it for at least three hours, I would advise you to wait until you do. The best time to make this is in the evening before you know you'll be out on the town. When you get home, your house will be perfumed with the most amazing smells and you can dunk some fresh bread into the sauce before you fall asleep. Damn that sounds good, doesn't it?
To make meatballs, mix two pounds each ground beef (20% lean), mild or hot Italian sausage meat. Add 1 cup of breadcrumbs, 1 egg, 1/4 cup grated onion, 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning, 1 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper. Mix with your hands to combine. Form the meat into golf ball-shaped balls and refrigerate for 1 hour. Brown the meatballs on all sides in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat coated with olive oil. Bake the meatballs covered in finished marinara sauce for 30 minutes in a 300°F oven. Serve over pasta and garnish with fresh basil leaves and sprinkle with plenty of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
To make a blush sauce, puree half the sauce in a blender and add it back to the pot. Stir in one pint of heavy cream and serve over pasta. Garnish with fresh basil leaves and sprinkle with plenty of Parmigiano-Reggiano. To make a vodka cream sauce, replace the red wine or vermouth with vodka and proceed as above for blush sauce.
To make a simple meat sauce, saute ground beef or Italian sausage (hot/spicy or mild/sweet), casings removed, in a skillet, crumbling it into smaller pieces with a flat wooden spatula. Drain off some of the grease and add the meat to the Marinara sauce. It will flavor the sauce the longer it simmers together but it is also delicious right away. The sauce can be frozen or canned with the meat in it.
