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Spaghetti

5/27/2018

14 Comments

 
Picture

​When I make my spaghetti, all is right with the world.
 
I started refining the dish decades ago, after my mother wrote it down on a now stained and much used index card. 
 
But like most folks who are comfortable in an apron, her recipe was more of a suggestion than an instruction.  So, I’ve experimented and finessed with the ingredients and assemblage for a long time, which also means that the sauce is a little different every time.
 
Like many housewives of the 1950s on a budget, my mother’s recipe was both simple and cheap. 
 
The basic ingredients were a pound or so of hamburger, celery and an onion; tomato sauce and tomato paste, and some  green bell pepper (but only if there was some left over in the frig).  Water was added, along with a bit of cut up pepperoni, table salt and pepper, and dried spices (I knew nothing about fresh herbs until I was an adult). 
 
The sauce was spooned over whatever spaghetti noodles—pasta was a word no one had ever heard of—on sale.  And
given the times, it was topped with the only parmesan cheese any of us knew about, powdered and in a green
cardboard container.   
 
​It was delicious.
 
My jollying up begins with the meat.  I use ground chuck because it has a sweeter profile than plain hamburger meat, as well as more fat. I also buy three quarters of a pound of not-in-casing Italian sausage because that’s what The Hubster likes.  But sometimes I’ll substitute pepperoni, cut in thin nickel shapes, just as my mom liked to do.  However, I add more than she did, up to one heaping cup.
 
My mom only used one pot, which is where I make my initial big turn.
 
I do brown the chuck and sausage with a tiny bit of olive oil (if using pepperoni, that’s added later) in her Dutch oven. But once that’s going, I heat a large frying pan with more olive oil.  Setting the burner to medium, I’ll sauté one large chopped yellow onion, an entire chopped green bell pepper, three coarsely chopped stalks of celery, and 10 sliced, fresh mushrooms, all sprinkled with a bit of kosher salt.  I won’t completely cook this, so the flame goes off after five minutes.   

At this time, preheat the oven at 375 degrees, because another ingredient will go into the Dutch oven soon.   
 
Once the meat has cooked, the veggie mix and its juices are poured in. Then I’ll add a 15 ounce can of good tomato sauce and a six ounce can of tomato paste (I like Contadina).  Next I’ll fill the empty tomato sauce can with water, then put that water in the pot.  I’ll do this two more times, then add one small can of chopped black olives and if using pepperoni, that as well.  Stir completely while bringing the mixture to a slow boil. 
 
The oven should be up to temperature by now, so it’s time for roasted garlic.
 
Take one large garlic bulb and with a serrated knife, cut off the top, and even a little of the sides, to ensure that all of the cloves are showing a bit.  Place the bulb top up in tin foil with a bay leaf and a bit of olive oil, wrap well and put in the oven for 40 minutes or so.    
 
Once the sauce comes to a boil, turn the heat down so it’s barely bubbling.  Now is also the time to add fresh herbs: two heaping tablespoons each of chopped basil and oregano, and a little kosher salt.  Let it cook for about 45 minutes, then take the garlic bulb out to cool. 
 
Next, I add an ingredient that sounds odd, but works—a heaping tablespoon of honey.  It won’t make the sauce sweet, but does takes away any taste of acidity.  Squeezing the cooked garlic cloves into the pot also happens now.
 
Keep simmering for a few hours, making sure to stir and add water as needed.  It’s a good time for more salt to taste, too.  I’m also grating some fresh parmesan cheese about now. 
 
Once the sauce has bubbled for two and half hours, make your pasta. The Hubster and I like thin spaghetti cooked al dente.  My mom always poured cold water over the done pasta, but I won’t do this step because the sauce sticks much better without it.    
 
Five minutes before serving, I turn the burner off the pot and let it sit.  Then I put sauce and pasta together in a family style bowl.  But I always place the pot of sauce on the table, too, because some folks like extra.  The parmesan cheese sits next to both.
 
This sauce isn’t nearly as cost effective as my mom’s.  But it can be made for about $15—with plenty left over for another meal or a few lunches.  In fact, this recipe tastes even better the second and third time around. 
 
Someday, I hope my daughter will want to learn how to make my spaghetti.  
 
I can’t know how it will taste.
 
But I do know that a lot of room for improvisation—as it was for my mom and me—will be encouraged.     
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14 Comments
Hilary/Jennifer
5/29/2018 06:24:13 pm

From Hilary's cousin Jennifer: I add olives to my spaghetti and Italian sausage (ingredients my mom never added)...I also like Contadina tomato paste...I've never put in celery bur I like the honey suggestion having sometimes added a little sugar, and the roasted garlic sounds like a great addition. My spaghetti sauce is never the same way twice - always tweaking. I've been known to put chopped, cooked spinach in it. Eat and enjoy!

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Hilary Grant
5/29/2018 06:25:25 pm

The spinach sounds odd to me, but on the other hand, I have a recipe for pesto sauce w/ a lot of spinach, and it's quite good. I'll have to try this next time! : )

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Susan Jordan
5/29/2018 08:01:54 pm

The faded, stained index cards for the recipes bring back happy memories; my mom has hers, plus all my grandma's old ones on the same card stock! I've been wanting for awhile now to experiment with making homemade vegan or vegetarian spaghetti sauce. I could also substitute the meat with a vegetarian replacement, but it would truly be an experiment until I learned to adjust it correctly, lol! Spaghetti is such a great comfort food, isn't it?

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Hilary A Grant
5/29/2018 08:21:23 pm

Spaghetti is THE comfort food for my husband--as a child, he always asked for it on his birthday. For me, it's a toss-up between my sauce and chicken pot pie. AND, I still have the 1940s pamphlet (for Spry, a competitor of Crisco) for homemade pot pie. The pie, however, is VERY labor intensive if done right. I think of my marinara sauce as my vegetarian sauce, LOL! :)

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Tracy link
5/29/2018 08:47:06 pm

Brings back memories, thank you!,

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Hilary Grant
5/30/2018 09:50:19 am

Awww, you're welcome. :)

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Hilary Grant/Pamela Neail Thomas
5/30/2018 10:08:14 am

From Pam Thomas:
Sweet memories. My mother made the worst Italian food ever. You would think that impossible for a New York cook, but she managed to undistinguish herself. She was a fine cook otherwise. The thing was, I really didn’t know how unorthodox it was. Once I married an Italian, everything changed. He sat me down early on and taught me to make the gravy, introduced me to Reggiano Parmiagiana, apple in red wine, sopressata and the grain pastry his Neapolitan mother made for Easter. All sublime. I am going to confess though, that sometimes, even now, when I am in an old style NY Italian joint, I order spaghetti and meatballs. Gauche as can be, it is delicious and invokes another era. I loved your post. Sono buono!

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Hilary A Grant
5/30/2018 10:10:52 am

Yup, nothing the matter w/ old fashioned spaghetti and meatballs. I mean, it was good enough for Lady, the refined spaniel in Lady and the Tramp! : )

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Lori Dansky
5/30/2018 10:35:53 am

My mom's recipe was a lot like your mom's, but she kept a kosher kitchen so no pepperoni or sausage for us! I still make a very similar meat sauce to my mom's, I now use ground turkey. Your sauce sounds wonderful, but too much work for me these days.

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Hilary Grant
5/30/2018 11:01:21 am

It's definitely labor intensive! For the sausage, you could buy turkey sausage if you'd like. But of course, that's an added step. Interesting that back in the day, our moms' spaghetti sauce ALWAYS had meat in it. Being a vegetarian back then was considered sort of odd ball... but, of course, no more! :)

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leslie spoon
5/30/2018 08:50:12 pm

Hilary Your spaghetti is really, really good!!!!! My mom use to roast a beef chuck 7 bone pot roast and she would put dry onion soup mix on top of it and then a can of cream of mushroom soup over that. That was my favorite with mashed potatoes.

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Hilary
5/30/2018 09:40:57 pm

Thank you! Hey, that pot roast dish sounds so rich--and SO GOOD! I'd probably spoon both the roast and creamy gravy over a few big spoonfuls of mashed potatoes. Not exactly pretty, but, who cares?
Can't eat it the way I used to... but I'd try, for sure! : )

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Larry Grant
6/4/2018 06:03:56 pm

The spaghetti in the picture looks a lot like my Aunt Nonah's. Great childhood memories. It was one of her specialties. To this day my answer to, "What's your favorite dish?", is spaghetti. My cousin and I helped make the meatballs.
My mom, though a really good cook, did not tackle spaghetti from scratch. She bought a Chef-Boy-R-Dee kit, not a can, a boxed kit that contained dry spaghetti, powdered Parmesan and a can of sauce. She'd brown some hamburger. Add it to the sauce. And, voila!, spaghetti dinner.

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Hilary Grant
6/4/2018 10:25:16 pm

We always looked forward to spaghetti in our house, too. I'll admit that as much as I like lasagna and linguine, red sauce with meat spaghetti is still my favorite. Chef-Boy-R-Dee kits were very popular in the 1950s; lots of ads for them in women's magazines of the day. : ) xo

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    Hilary Roberts Grant

    Journalist, editor, filmmaker, foodie--and a clown! 
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