Tag: Italian

My Really Simple Italian Meat Sauce

On a rainy summer day or a cold winter afternoon I sometimes get the urge to make my marinara sauce. It’s best made with fresh tomatoes and needs to simmer slowly for a couple of hours to let the flavors develop. I usually make a pretty big batch and we freeze it in pint and quart containers that we can use as needed. But no matter how much I make, it seems that we run out before tomatoes are in season, or I just don’t want to spend lots of time in the kitchen.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” says the old proverb, but so is laziness. Here is a meat sauce with lots of flavor that you can serve a half hour after you open the first can. Start the pasta water when the meat starts to brown, and everything will be ready before the family starts whining for supper.

It is easier to open a jar of commercial sauce, but if you follow this recipe, you’ll be serving a sauce that tastes better with less starch, sugar and salt than commercial products. If you appreciate good food, are concerned about your health, have diabetes or other health issues, this sauce is for you.

This recipe makes six generous servings.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 lb. lean ground beef
1/2 lb. hot or sweet Italian sausage
3 T chopped onion
3 T green bell pepper
1 16 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 8 oz. tomato sauce
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
1/4 tsp. fennel
1/8 tsp. basil
1/8 tsp. oregano
1/16 tsp. cayenne
1/16 tsp. garlic powder
1/8 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup dry red wine
2 tsp. olive oil

PROCEDURE:

Brown the meat in a three quart saucepan, breaking it into pieces as it cooks. Drain any excess fat. Chop the onion and pepper to a quarter inch dice and add it to the meat. Cook for two or three minutes to soften the onion.

While the meat and vegetables are cooking, measure the spices into a mortar or coffee cup and grind them together a little with a pestle or spoon. Stir them into the meat mixture and sauté them a minute. Add the tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato paste along with the wine and olive oil.

Mix everything together, reduce the heat and simmer the sauce while the pasta finishes cooking. When the pasta is nearly ready, taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning.

Serve over pasta of your choice with a green salad and bread. Offer Parmesan cheese.

NOTES: Jerri says, “There’s a lot of meat in this sauce.” I say, “It’s meat in a sauce, not sauce with some meat in it.”

If you are concerned about the alcohol in the wine, simmer the sauce five minutes longer to make sure that you have driven off the “Devil’s brew.” You just want the flavor.

This sauce freezes well.

Jerri’s Ham and Swiss Lasagna

Like many good cooks who enjoy trying new recipes, Jerri notes ones that turned out especially well by writing the name and page number of the recipe on the flyleaf of the cookbook where she found it. “It saves a lot of time,” she observes.

There are four thus noted in the Better Homes and Gardens Meat Stretcher Cook Book, which we bought shortly after it was published in 1974. She annotated others throughout the thin volume that came close to making the cut as truly superior. “Good, but a little bland” is her assessment of a ham and cheese bake while Pork Florentine earned a “Good.” In the margin for Corn Chowder she judged it good and said that you could also make it with ham rather than bacon and suggested adding some chopped carrot for color.

I’m sure that she tried many recipes in the book, but there is not one negative comment, unless “bland” qualifies. Like me, she was taught to say nothing if you couldn’t say something nice. Unlike me, she follows that rule.

Of the four recipes she listed on the flyleaf, Ham and Swiss Lasagna is the one we have most often. This may be partly because when Jerri was giving piano lessons, she cooked things that she could assemble before her students came for lessons after school and pop in the oven a half hour or so before I got home from work.

But we cook it today because it is easy to make and has a combination of flavors that we find delicious.

INGREDIENTS:

6 Lasagna noodles
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
2 T butter
3 T all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups milk
5 – 6 ounces Swiss cheese
2 cups chopped cooked ham
1 can mushroom stems and pieces
Paprika

PROCEDURE:

Start by heating the water to cook the lasagna noodles. As the water is heating, peel an onion and finely chop a quarter cup of it. Wash and finely chop a quarter cup of green bell pepper. Chop about two cups of cooked ham into a quarter inch dice.

Thinly slice about five ounces of Swiss cheese and set it aside.

Cook the lasagna noodles according to the package directions until the noodles are al dente, about thirteen or fourteen minutes. Rinse them in cold water and set the drained noodles aside.

Warm the milk to steaming in the microwave or a small saucepan over moderate heat. Preheat the oven to 375º. Drain the mushrooms.

Heat the butter to foaming over moderate heat, then add the onions and pepper. Cook the vegetables for three minutes, then stir in the flour and cook the mixture another minute, string constantly. Blend in the milk and keep stirring until the sauce bubbles and thickens. Stir in the ham and mushrooms and remove the sauce from the heat.

Grease an eight by eight or six by ten inch baking dish. Arrange three of the noodles on the bottom of the dish, cover them with half of the sauce, then cover the sauce with a layer of Swiss cheese. Repeat with a second layer of each ingredient and finish with a sprinkle of paprika.

Bake the lasagna, covered, for about twenty-five minutes until everything is heated through. Remove the lasagna from the oven and allow it to cool for ten to fifteen minutes before serving.

This recipe makes six servings.

NOTES: Simple as it is, this dish deserves the honor of being served with with a good beer or a pinot noir or sauvignon blanc wine. Pair it with some French bread and butter and a green salad for a simple but elegant dinner.

A four ounce can of mushrooms works fine, but you can also sauté about four ounces of fresh mushrooms, which makes the dish taste even better.