Time to Make Sauce

This weekend, I decided it was time to start teaching Daphne how to make her favorite thing:  Spaghetti and Meatballs. I already had some meatballs in the freezer from last time we had it, so we started with learning the sauce.  She was already in a groove from her cooking class at Wegman's earlier that day, and she had the perfect hat!  So, things went pretty smoothly.

We are a two-sauce family.  My mom's meat sauce is awesome for plain pasta and I'm hoping she will teach it to Daphne. But for meatballs, we make a smooth tomato sauce with mushrooms.  Kev taught me this one, so if you're reading this, you are being let in on one of his Top Secret Kev Recipes.  So, don't tell anybody.  Actually , it's not so much a recipe as it is a guide.  When he first showed me how to make it, I was not very fond of cooking and I was definitely not confident in the kitchen.  I wanted to know the EXACT amounts of things and the EXACT steps.  If you have a recipe, then you can blame the recipe if the food turns out crappy.  But if you're winging it and it's bad, it's all on you. WAY too much pressure.

I am happy to report that 10 years ( and hours and hours of Food Network shows) later, I am not quite as inflexible as I was then, and I am definitely more confident when I cook.  While Daphne and I were making the sauce, I was telling her that you have to season it, and taste it, and see what it needs, and season it again.  Kev had a good laugh when he heard that, remembering all the kitchen panic of days gone by- "But it doesn't say how MUCH oregano!"

Above, we were having a little lesson about salt.  I was telling Daphne not to go too crazy (she loves grinding the salt) because you can always add more, but you can't take it out once it's in there.  Last night, I was watching "Worst Cooks in America," and this poor guy poured a whole bottle of soy sauce into a stir fry he was making for Crazy Ann Burrell.  Good grief.  She refused to even taste it.  I like that show.  Compared to the people on there, I think I'm in pretty good shape in the kitchen.

Our sauce turned out good and Daphne was pretty proud of it.  And we have a LOT left, so we're making baked ziti tonight.  I love left-overs.

Below, is the basic idea for making the sauce.  Serve with your favorite meatballs, some pasta, lots of freshly grated parmesan, and a nice salad.  And make sure you have plenty of napkins handy.

Kev's Sauce

Ingredients:

Olive Oil
Mushrooms, sliced
Garlic, minced
Salt
Pepper
Oregano
Basil
Bay leaf
2 large cans of tomato puree
tomato paste
red wine
sugar

Directions:

Heat a couple tablespoons, maybe a little more than that, of olive oil in a dutch oven.  Add the mushrooms and cook until slightly softened.  Season with salt, basil, and oregano, add as much or as little garlic as you like (I like a lot) and continue to cook for about 30 seconds.  Add the tomato puree and about 2 tablespoons of the tomato paste.  Add some sugar to cut the acidity of the tomato (maybe not quite a quarter of a cup), and about a cup of good red wine.  Stir it all together, throw in a bay leaf, cover and simmer for a nice long time, maybe two hours or so.  Check the seasoning now and then.  Add salt if it's too sweet, add sugar if it's too acidic, add herbs if it's too bland, add wine if it's too thick.  You can add black pepper too, if you want.  Use the Force.  You can do it.  Trust me.  If I can do it, you can do it.