How do you know if it's a good dish?

If it's gone. That's how.

There is no better test to tell how successful your cuisine creations have been. People can say they loved it all day long. The real question is, did they go back for seconds? Thirds?

This summer, with a lot of sunshine and late summer/early fall heat has been great to my tomato patch. So, I was very psyched to see a new, simple tomato sauce recipe.

Where I come from, it's like a badge of honor to have worked on the tomato sauce all day long. It can be very gratifying. It can also be a time suck.

We tried it and it was pretty good. Cold sauce is a bit strange, like borscht, and I don't even know what borscht is, but it doesn't sound very good.

It was very good, though, and we plowed right through this meal, on collezione and spaghetti. I sauteed some shrimp in butter, olive oil and red cooking wine. It is very hard to screw up anything with an in season garden tomato. The simplicity with just olive oil, basil, salt and pepper worked.

I thought the grater worked really well in removing the super soft meat from the tomatoes. Skinning tomatoes by blanching them is an unpleasant process, and the grater went easily right down to the skin.

I think I'll continue to use the grater to start the sauce, but heat it, even just for a little while. I think I like my cold, liquid tomatoes in salsa, not sauce.

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