A sauce is a calendar.
Every long-cook tomato sauce is also a memory of when the fruit ripened. The plants set fruit at the end of June; by August the kitchen window is fogged with steam; by the time the jars come up from the cellar in November, the garden bed is bare.
This dish is the spine of a year’s worth of cooking. It’s the easiest way to taste what twelve months of weather and water look like.
The plants behave differently every season. Wet June + dry August = thin skin, sweet flesh, a sauce that wants almost no reduction. Dry June + wet August = thick skin, more acidity, longer cook. The recipe stays the same; the sauce is never the same.
Reheats better than it serves.
Always make double. The second day is the point.