My Dad's Sauce Can Kick Your Dad's Sauce's Butt!

One summer afternoon, Angie, my BFF during fifth and sixth grade, and I took a break from playing Barbie to eat lunch.  As she reheated last night's leftover spaghetti, she declared, "My dad makes the best spaghetti sauce ever."  I went on to proclaim that my dad made pretty good spaghetti sauce as well and readied myself for something bordering on awesome as she assured me her father's was unquestionably better than my dad's.  The microwave finally dinged, and we took our seats opposite each other in the dining room.  At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a jar of Prego paired with some overcooked pasta.  If my first impression told me anything, it was that this was surely not the best sauce in the world.  I skeptically twisted a forkful of spaghetti around the tines, put the "best" spaghetti into my mouth, and discovered that it was, in fact, nothing more than Prego paired with overcooked spaghetti.  Not one to insult a hostess, I kept my opinion to myself but remained steadfast in my belief that my father did, in fact, make the best spaghetti sauce in all the world.

Twenty years later, and I'm still convinced.  His recipe has been significantly transformed from what it was when I was a kid, but it remains the benchmark against which I measure all other spaghetti sauces, even those I encounter at "authentic" Italian restaurants.  His current concoction was inspired by an episode of Lidia's Italy, which demonstrated how quickly a really good pot of spaghetti sauce could go together.  Accustomed to spending an entire day cooking the sauce, my father was intrigued when Lidia threw together a fantastic recipe in thirty minutes.  He has stuck to her recipe pretty closely, but I deviate (cheat) by adding a jar of my favorite spaghetti sauce and cooking it for at least a couple hours to allow the flavors to meld.  The jar of spaghetti sauce is to accommodate my husband, who didn't particularly enjoy the overly "tomatoey" flavor Lidia's recipe delivered.  This three cheese spaghetti sauce does a pretty good job of mellowing the acids in the tomatoes.

An intriguing note about how Lidia cooked her pasta:  she partially cooked it in boiling water for about six minutes and then finished it off in the sauce, adding as much as two cups of water from the pasta pot to account for the liquid the pasta absorbed while it cooked in the sauce.  Doing this not only made a more cohesive dish than the "traditional" method of serving ladlefuls of sauce atop "naked" pasta, but it also allowed the pasta to take on more of the sauce's flavor during cooking.  The result was exquisite!  A couple notes on cooking pasta.  According to Lidia, who is Italian so I figure an expert on the matter of Italian cooking, one should never add olive oil (or oil of any kind) to the boiling water.  Doing so will only coat the pasta and prevent it from absorbing whatever sauce it's to be served with.  Additionally, rinsing pasta is a mortal sin, or so Lidia tells me.  Rinsing washes away the pasta's external starches which contain a lot of flavor and also help the sauce stick to the pasta.  Sauce sticking to pasta = a good thing.  Naked pasta = blech!  My father and I found this technique, and the reasons behind it, so convincing that we both use it anytime we cook pasta that is to be served with a sauce...well, a red sauce.  I don't know if I'd do this with a cheese sauce.

My recipe follows, but take out the jarred sauce and cook for thirty minutes, and you have something quite similar to what my dad makes today.  Both are fantastic, but my husband is a lot more enthusiastic about the version that follows.  Some readers, particularly those who are avid foodies or are accustomed to good, authentic Italian cooking, will surely scoff at my use of canned products.  I can only say that I'm a lazy American and hope you'll forgive my crudeness.

Playground Warriors Spaghetti Sauce:

1 lb. Italian sausage (hot), removed from casings
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium onions, diced
1 green pepper, diced
8 oz. mushrooms, washed and sliced
6 oz. can of tomato paste
14.5 oz. can petite diced tomatoes
26 oz. jar of spaghetti sauce
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp each of basil, oregano and thyme
2 tsp sugar

1.  Cook sausage in 6-quart sauce pot breaking up into small chunks.  Remove from pot leaving grease behind.

2.  Brown vegetables in sausage grease until onions are transparent.  Move vegetables to the sides of the pot leaving a clear spot in the center.

3.  Add tomato paste to center of pot and stir to "caramelize."  Paste will become fragrant and will leave a fond behind on the bottom of the pot.  Once this happens, return sausage to the pot and stir everything together.

4.  Add diced tomatoes, spaghetti sauce (plus a little water to clean the remaining sauce out of the jar), spices and mix thoroughly.

5.  Cover and cook for several hours (at least two, but I prefer longer).  Maintain a low simmer and stir every fifteen minutes or so.  Be sure to taste the sauce periodically and adjust seasonings to suit your palate.

This recipe yields a lot of sauce, so I typically cook a full pound of pasta to go along with it.  If you're going to finish off your pasta in the spaghetti sauce as I do, after you cook the pasta in about 8 quarts of salted water for 6 minutes, use tongs to add all the pasta to the spaghetti sauce as well as a full cup of the pasta water.  Stir thoroughly.  Cover and cook for about 20 minutes, or until pasta has reached the tenderness you desire.  Stir every few minutes and add pasta water as needed.  The pasta will absorb a lot, so don't be surprised if you find yourself adding upwards of 2 cups of water.

6.  Serve and enjoy!

Wine note:  So, my husband and I are trying to expand our wine palate (we hear it's supposedly good for you).  Tonight, we paired the above with a glass of Kiarna's Cabernet Sauvignon (v. 2009).  Paired with this sauce, this wine is quite good.  At first sip, you can clearly taste the smooth, fruity flavors of this full-bodied wine, but its aftertaste is a bit too bitter for my liking.