Ingredients: |
Ingredients: 1/2 lb ground round steak
1/2 lb ground lean pork
1/8 lb salt pork slice, diced
2 (2-cup-sized) cans tomatoes, whole Italian plum
2 small cans tomato paste, Italian
2 onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
Olive oil
1 large bay leaf
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 cup chopped parsley
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped green peppers
2 pinches dried chili peppers
1 tsp sugar
Salt & pepper to taste
1 1-lb box spaghetti
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Directions: |
Directions:The Sauce: Get out your next-to-largest pot (you need the very largest for the spaghetti itself). Peel and chop roughly the two onions and three cloves of garlic. Put a large puddle of olive in the pot and add the onions and garlic. Let them fry very slowly. Put the ground round steak, the ground pork, and the salt pork (diced) into a frying pan, mix it with a wooden spoon to break it up, and let it fry until nearly cooked and well separated.
Open the cans of tomatoes and tomato paste, and put them and the fried meat into the pot with the onions. Add the bay leaf, oregano, and basil. Stir well and allow to cook over low to moderate heat. Add chopped parsley, celery, couple of pinches of dried chili peppers and sugar. Salt & pepper to taste. If the sauces tastes too sour or acid, add a little more sugar.
Let the sauce cook, stirring occasionally, for a couple of hours over a low fire, and with a lid on. It should thicken slightly. It will be much better the day after it is cooked.
The Pasta: Boil salted water in the biggest pot you have, or buy an especially big one just for spaghetti! If the pot is too small, the pasta will stick to itself; it needs to move about freely as it cooks.
Half a pound of spaghetti will serve two people. Break it in half; or stand it on end and it will slip down into the pot as it cooks. Stir it with a fork to make sure it doesn't stick. Ten minutes is about long enough to cook it, but test it by fishing out a strand and biting it. Just before it is ready, it will have a white dot in the center of the strand. As soon as the white dot disappears, the spaghetti is perfectly done "al dente," meaning judged by your teeth. Drain immediately. Serve onto big plates, and put a lump of butter in the middle of each serving before you pour on the sauce. |
Personal
Notes: |
Personal
Notes: This sauce recipe makes more than enough for two people, and you will have quite a bit left over. It keeps very well and improves with a few days' aging. You can even freeze some of it. Use it with another batch of spaghetti, or else on rice, on an omelet, on a minute steak, on noodles - you could even make a lasagna.
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This recipe for My Old Man's Spaghetti from "The Male Chauvinist's Cookbook" is from