dispelling the myths

Let's get to these ideas about cookng that are completely wrong.
Tomato sauce is not cooked for hours and hours--that only creates a sour acid sauce. One and a half to two hours is sufficent.
Salt doesn't kill you--just get rid of that iodized nonsense that the Morton hiers are living off of. Get some decent sea salt, Hain or the bulk sea salts you can find in places like Whole Foods or New Seasons. The mined pink mineral salt from Mexico has long been my staple.
Don't be afraid to use it.
Salt your pasta water--otherwise you end up with a bland pasta that requires a ton of parmigiano to correct it.
You also don't have to spend two fortunes on some of the designer salts that you might see in the above mentioned stores, but get familiar--the best cooks say, "change your salt and you will change your cooking" this is true.
Do not be afraid to salt beans as they are cooking--this is the way the flavor permeates the bean.
Remeber, before there ever was a refridgerator--salt was the main preservative.
Here's a folk tale: Attola the hun is credited with creating carpaccio-- they say that his band of maraurders placed the sliced beef under the saddles of their horses as they plundered in the carpathian mountains so that the salty sweat from the horses bodies preserved the meat.
Pretty ingenious, wasn't it ?
So, here's the tomato sauce recipe:
Two 28 oz. cans of plum tomatoes---I like Muir Glen the best
4-6 cloves of chopped garlic
a large handful of fresh basil
6-8 whole peppercorns
1/2 medium onion finely diced
2-3 tablespoons good quality olive oil
heat the oil in a sauce pan and add the garlic and onions and saute' until soft.
add the tomatoes and the torn basil leaves along with the peppercorns
bring to a simmer and allow this to cook for 1.5 to 2 hours
about 1/2 through the cooking, puree the softened tomatoes with and immersion blender or in the cuisinart and return them to thepan for the remainder of the cooking time.
correct the seasoning with salt at the end--tomatoes are acid and salty on their own that's why
it is added at the end--you may not even need it.
more later--strega