Busy cooking
I have not posted this afternoon because I am cooking my quarterly batch of tomato meat sauce, as per my mother’s recipe that was handed to her from our Italian-Jewish relatives. Time consuming, but I get enough frozen to last for at least three months.
One of my readers requested I share the recipe, so here it is. The quantites below are for making a large batch, 9 meals for two (splitting a meatball), and an additional uncounted number of pasta dishes (meat ravioli, spaghetti, rigatoni, etc). Usually lasts Diane and I about three months.
Ma Zimmerman’s spaghetti sauce
Preparing the meatballs:
1.5 pounds ground beef (I use 93% lean, but a higher fat count would definitely improve the taste).
1 grated large onion.
2 eggs
0.75+ cup plain breadcrumbs (you use enough to make sure the meatballs will hold their shape).
salt
pepper
Mix to make nine large meatballs.
1 large sliced onion
3 large garlic cloves, sliced thin
4 tablespoons Crisco
4 tablespoons olive oil
Saute onion and garlic in Crisco/olive oil until golden brown.
Add meatballs and brown/sear them on all sides.
Put meatballs aside.
Discard onions and garlic, saving as much of the liquid as possible. (I use a potato ricer. I put the onions/garlic into it and squeeze out the extra juice.)
The sauce:
2 12oz cans of tomato paste
2 12oz cans of water (I remove the paste from the cans, piling it onto a plate to make it easy to use, and in filling the cans with water use that water to capture the remaining paste in the cans).
2 29 oz cans of tomato puree (if available. 28 oz works though)
2 28 oz cans of crushed tomatoes
1 generous tablespoon of oregano
1+ generous tablespoon of fresh parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon of salt
sprinkling of pepper
Get a large stock pot. Over a high flame, put the liquid from the garlic/onion saute in the pot, add the tomato paste and mix until all the liquid is mixed with the paste. It should almost singe.
Add the water from the two cans slowly, mixing as you do so.
Add puree and crushed tomatos, mixing well.
If I use 29 oz puree cans, I then add about 1.5 cups more water, putting it first into the cans to capture all of the remaining puree and crushed tomatoes.
Lower flame to medium.
Add salt, pepper, orgeno, parsley.
Cook for 1.5 hours, stirring periodically and lowering flame slowly to just above low to keep the sauce simmering without overheating.
Add meatballs.
Cook another 40 minutes.
Eat.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I have not posted this afternoon because I am cooking my quarterly batch of tomato meat sauce, as per my mother’s recipe that was handed to her from our Italian-Jewish relatives. Time consuming, but I get enough frozen to last for at least three months.
One of my readers requested I share the recipe, so here it is. The quantites below are for making a large batch, 9 meals for two (splitting a meatball), and an additional uncounted number of pasta dishes (meat ravioli, spaghetti, rigatoni, etc). Usually lasts Diane and I about three months.
Ma Zimmerman’s spaghetti sauce
Preparing the meatballs:
1.5 pounds ground beef (I use 93% lean, but a higher fat count would definitely improve the taste).
1 grated large onion.
2 eggs
0.75+ cup plain breadcrumbs (you use enough to make sure the meatballs will hold their shape).
salt
pepper
Mix to make nine large meatballs.
1 large sliced onion
3 large garlic cloves, sliced thin
4 tablespoons Crisco
4 tablespoons olive oil
Saute onion and garlic in Crisco/olive oil until golden brown.
Add meatballs and brown/sear them on all sides.
Put meatballs aside.
Discard onions and garlic, saving as much of the liquid as possible. (I use a potato ricer. I put the onions/garlic into it and squeeze out the extra juice.)
The sauce:
2 12oz cans of tomato paste
2 12oz cans of water (I remove the paste from the cans, piling it onto a plate to make it easy to use, and in filling the cans with water use that water to capture the remaining paste in the cans).
2 29 oz cans of tomato puree (if available. 28 oz works though)
2 28 oz cans of crushed tomatoes
1 generous tablespoon of oregano
1+ generous tablespoon of fresh parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon of salt
sprinkling of pepper
Get a large stock pot. Over a high flame, put the liquid from the garlic/onion saute in the pot, add the tomato paste and mix until all the liquid is mixed with the paste. It should almost singe.
Add the water from the two cans slowly, mixing as you do so.
Add puree and crushed tomatos, mixing well.
If I use 29 oz puree cans, I then add about 1.5 cups more water, putting it first into the cans to capture all of the remaining puree and crushed tomatoes.
Lower flame to medium.
Add salt, pepper, orgeno, parsley.
Cook for 1.5 hours, stirring periodically and lowering flame slowly to just above low to keep the sauce simmering without overheating.
Add meatballs.
Cook another 40 minutes.
Eat.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Would you like to share the recipe? Please?
[I was crippled by a childhood of English cooking.]
David Bullis: No problem. I will add it to the post.
Was this effort cleared by the FAA?
The best cooks are Mafia cooks :)
And now I am hungry.
“I have not posted this afternoon because I am cooking my quarterly batch of tomato meat sauce”
Sometimes you belong else where
https://t.ly/HxzWr
(13 second video)
It says something about this country that we are discussing a recipe for Italian quisine that comes from a Jewish lady.
I’m an American – I’m a mutt! (1/2 Polish (a city girl from Warsaw and a hillbilly from the Carpathians), 1/4 Hungarian, 1/4 Russian Jew)
Col Beausabre: This recipe actually says something also about Italy. My mother got the recipe from my the parents of my aunt, who were Jewish-Italian immigrants, whom I believe came from Rome. That they had survived in Italy at all in the 19th and 20th century is a triumph of the tolerance of our modern western civilization. That they came here illustrates how America once stood at the peak of that civilization.
Is that for sauce or gravy?
Anyway we don’t want no recipes, we want the sauce. Somebody’s going to make it for us, right? I demand equity, I don’t got no sauce.