Community cookbooks—those homespun, spiral bound fundraisers put together by church groups, school PTO’s, clubs, and social service organizations—ought to be a window into the community from which they come. Unfortunately, more often than not, they don't really reflect what actually goes on in the average kitchen.

What they often reveal, unfortunately, is how deeply insecure most of us are about the routine cooking we do at home. Instead of offering something perfected over the years by rote repetition, what most people tend to lend for these books, I’m sorry to say, is something clever.

“Nobody,” they reason, “wants that plain old stuff—that’s not cooking—it’s just something I do; but—look here—here’s something really clever and quick that you can do with a couple of cans and a box of Minute Rice—and everybody just loves it.”

Or, even worse, they pass along some elaborate recipe out of a national food magazine that they have made exactly once and never plan to make again.

In short, by looking at these books, you would think that the average American home cook had no idea what to do with anything that was raw when they bought it, and could not function without a food magazine and/or arsenal of canned cream soup, jarred marinara, Veg-All, frozen broccoli, and boxed cake mixes.

This will probably get me thrown out of the elite foodie club, but there is nothing wrong with occasional shortcuts. There is always a jar or two of marinara in my pantry and bottle of marinade in the refrigerator. No, it is never as tasty or wholesome as a sauce made from scratch, but it can be a boon when the time I actually have to put dinner on the table is crunched by work or a cooking class.

But these things are no substitute for the everyday goodness that far too many of us toss off and dismiss simply because it is a matter of routine for us.

Somehow, we’ve got to get a little of our own back, to find some pride in the things that are a matter of routine in our kitchens. Take that marinara, for example: for a Sicilian or Neapolitan cook, homemade tomato sauce is something she makes several hundred times a year. She might not think about it enough to realize that she’s proud of it, but she is.

You probably have something very much like that in your own routine cooking—something really simple and tasty that you toss off without giving it a lot of thought. I’m not saying you need to be inordinately puffed up about it, but it deserves the quiet pride that a Sicilian grandmother has for her tomato sauce.

It doesn’t have to be something deeply rooted in our heritage to be a tradition (although wouldn’t it be nice if we could find a better sense of pride in our own culinary roots?); it just needs to be deeply rooted in the history that you and your family have built over the course of your life together. That’s tradition enough.

Then maybe, just maybe, we might not be quite so schizophrenic or depressingly dysfunctional as cooks whenever someone asks us for a recipe for a community cookbook.

My Simple Tomato Sauce with Garlic and Basil

I’ve routinely made this simple sauce for nearly thirty years now, and while it is not a part of my family heritage, it is a deeply engrained piece of my own culinary history. It is very simple to make. Though fresh tomatoes in season are best, it is still awfully good with the canned variety out of season, or when you don’t have any fresh ones in the house.

Use it to sauce thin spaghetti, linguine, or short tubular pasta such penne or rigatoni. You may pass freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano separately or not bother—it’s good even without the cheese. Try it, too, over a simple grilled chicken breast and pork chop.

Makes enough for 4 main-dish servings of pasta, or 6 if used as a pasta course

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced

1 small chopped fresh hot pepper, stemmed and seeded, or a teaspoon of crushed dried hot peppers, more or less, to taste

2 cups peeled, seeded, and chopped tomatoes, with al their juice (either fresh or canned San Marzano tomatoes)

Sea or kosher salt

1 handful of fresh basil leaves

1. Put the oil and garlic in a wide 3-quart saucepan or sauté pan over medium high heat. Sauté, stirring occasionally, until it is colored pale gold. Add hot pepper to taste and toss well. Add the tomatoes and a pinch or so of salt and bring to a boil.

2. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes break down, the sauce is thick, and the oil has begun to separate from the tomatoes. Taste and correct the salt and turn off the heat.

3. Just before serving, gently reheat the sauce. Tear the basil leaves into small pieces and stir them into the sauce. Immediately toss it with the hot cooked pasta.