Rustic Homemade Pizza Sauce

You can turn almost any of your extra CSA veggies into toppings on a homemade pizza.  From the Cooking Close to Home cookbook, this simple, chunky, sauce yields about 3½ cups, enough for 3, 16-inch pizzas.  It is also an excellent base for adding pasta sauce ingredients like ground meat, sausage, or other veggies later.  You can also freeze it, in case you have more tomatoes than you know what to do with.

If you have fresh herbs, the conversion is one teaspoon dry equals one Tablespoon fresh (and fresh will taste so much better!).

Ingredients: 
2 Tablespoons olive oil
¼ cup minced onion
3 teaspoons minced fresh garlic
6 cups fresh tomatoes, cored, seeded and quartered
¼ cup tomato paste
3 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 teaspoons dried basil
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried parsley
⅛ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Procedure:

1. Heat the olive oil over medium-low heat.  Add the onions and garlic and sauté about 5-7 minutes or until tender.
2. Add the tomatoes, paste, vinegar, basil, oregano, parsley, and pepper flakes and simmer for 45 minutes or until quite thick and the liquid is cooked off.
3. Purée the mixture in a food processor until smooth.  You can also use an immersion blender, but the sauce will be a bit chunkier (not a bad thing, either).