I picked one up, also got an onion and some garlic, and some thyme and basil, and still spent barely under five bucks.
To start this kind of pomodoro sauce, you first need to get the skins off the tomatoes before you'll be able to make a nice sauce. Blanching them is the fastest way to do that, and besides, you'll want to stew the tomatoes a little.
To blanch them, core the tops:
And score the bottoms, slice an "X" in them. This will make it quick peeling business once you drop them in ice water from the boiling water.
Here's a picture of the "before" prep work. For this sauce I went old school-industrious style, and used a box grater for the onion and a hard-cheese grater for the garlic:
Here's the "after", the onion and garlic grated and retaining their spilled juices:
Here're the tomatoes in the boiling water. The skins will start to slough off, and that's when you drop them into ice water, and then moments later peel off the skins. From there I'd drop them back into the boiling water, to stew them a little more, but not for too much time, maybe two minutes or less.
Once stewed, I used a potato masher to mash the tomatoes. They don't need to be fully cooked through, since you'll be getting to them later
Starting with olive oil, add the onions.
Once nice and soft, add the garlic, red pepper flakes, and thyme. Work it until it blooms, and your kitchen fills with the nice aroma:
Then add your wine. I only had red wine, so it comes out an odd purple. Reduce it by half.
Next add water or stock, bring to boil, and add the tomato. I used stock, and I didn't use enough to be able to break down the tomatoes for long enough to meld the flavors completely. Be sure to have been adding salt and pepper, and add a tablespoon of sugar with the tomato to counteract the acidity. It won't make anything sweet.
Balsamic vinegar is another thing that can be added, even though acidity can be an issue. It brightens the flavor and brings out the savory with its own sweetness. It's hard to explain.
Right near the end add a healthy amount of fresh chopped basil. You'll be able to tell it's almost done when the tomato will be mostly broken down, but still partly chunky.
This is also vegan, but not because I wanted it that way; it just worked out like that. If you want, mounting it with butter is a good way to alter the mouth-feel, but isn't necessary. (To mount it, put a little butter in and mix it vigorously off the heat.)
It gets better by the day, also. I used it with angel hair pasta and sliced sausage.
