Grandma Mel's Tomato Sauce

From camera issues to computer issues. A couple of weeks ago Ben spilled water on our laptop and it would no longer turn on. Soooooo on the advice of friends and the Internet, we baked, yes BAKED, our computer in the oven at 175 degrees for 15 minutes. It worked! ...but only for a few days, when again it wouldn't turn on. Baked again, worked again, until it didn't. New computer!  The end.

Anyway.

Since I made it for company last Friday, I'm going to share with you one of the most valuable recipes I know.  I'll start at my beginning, although the story really begins long before that.  I met my husband in college.  He would often visit his aunt Carol, who lived not too far from campus, for dinner.  Not long after we started doing couple-y things together, he invited me over to her house for "spaghetti and meatballs."  I declined -- too much homework, and besides, I didn't like tomato sauce!  Undeterred, he brought some back for me (plus a brownie).  Well, I wasn't converted... not yet.  But I accepted the invitation the next time it was offered, and I tagged along with John to meet his mother's side of the family -- 100% Sicilian -- for the first time: his aunt (the kindest, friendliest, bubbliest woman I have ever had the pleasure to know) and his grandfather (who laughed for minutes on end when I told him how I had been repeatedly warned about his "inappropriate humor").  Unaware of the history of what I was being served, I politely (or really impolitely) asked to skip the tomato sauce so I could toss my pasta with the Good Seasons salad dressing on the table.  What can I say?  I was barely 18.

As I got to know my future in-laws, I learned that the smooth, meaty tomato sauce was actually the signature recipe of his grandmother Carmella, who died too early of ovarian cancer in 1997.  She loved organizing big family gatherings, for which a big pot of tomato sauce and several pounds of pasta is a perfect feast.  Over time, as her illness progressed, she taught her middle daughter, Carol, how to make her sauce just right -- because as with all the best sauces, of course, a written recipe will only get you so far.  In fact, legend has it that Carol couldn't get the sauce quite right until the first time she made it after her mother had passed on.

It's been ten years after that first night of pasta at Carol's house, and the family has celebrated numerous graduations, marriages, and births -- Mel's grandchildren are all grown up now.  But her three daughters still strive to get everyone together a couple of times a year, and when they succeed we always have Sauce.  It wasn't long before I learned to love it, and the year I married John, I asked Carol to teach me how to make it.  If the joy of being surrounded by people who love you unconditionally had a flavor, this is what it would taste like to me.  That probably sounds pretty cheesy.  But seriously, don't forget: it's gotta be Pecorino Romano.

Grandma Mel's Tomato Sauce

28 ounces canned tomato puree

18 ounces canned tomato paste

At least one bottle of good Chianti Classico, Grandma Mel's favorite wine

1 tablespoon olive oil

3-4 large cloves garlic, minced

2-4 bone-in pork ribs

1-2 bay leaves

Big pinch of sugar

Big pinch of baking soda

Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

1 pound ground beef

½ pound ground pork

¼ bunch fresh parsley, chopped

1/4 cup of minced fresh Italian herbs (dried herbs to taste are fine, too)

2 eggs, plus more if needed

1 cup bread crumbs

½ cup fresh grated Pecorino Romano cheese

Extra Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper to taste

2-3 pounds of rigatoni or cappelini

Combine all the tomato products in a big stock pot. For every can of tomato paste, add three cans of water. You can use the water to get all the extra tomato off the sides of the cans.  Put the pot on the stove over low heat. Throughout the process, stir the sauce frequently so that the bottom doesn’t burn.

Now's a good time to open that wine.  Go ahead and pour a glass for yourself, and anyone else who wants one mid-afternoon (if you're among Sicilians, you'll have plenty of company).  This isn't supposed to feel like work.

Meanwhile, in a frying pan, heat a small amount of olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and sauté until it's golden, then add the garlic to the sauce using a slotted spoon, reserving the oil in the hot pan.  Add the pork ribs and brown them on both sides, then add them to the sauce. Next, add the bay leaves, sugar, baking soda, and seasoning.  Take your time.  Drink your wine.

In a separate bowl, combine the ground meat, herbs, eggs, bread crumbs, cheese, and seasonings, adjusting the ingredients so that mixture is not too dry or too moist. Roll the mixture into meatballs, brown them all over in the  frying pan in batches that work for your pan size, then add them to the sauce.

And now you can really sit down and enjoy yourself, because the real work is done.  For the next 2-3 hours, simmer the sauce uncovered, remembering to stir every now and again and doing a taste test every so often (or getting other people to do it).  Your main concerns are not letting the bottom burn and skimming off any tomato froth that may form on top of the sauce.  After about 2 hours, cook the pasta to al dente, drain, and toss with just enough sauce to prevent sticking.  Serve the pasta on individual dishes topped with sauce, meatballs, and grated Romano.  Eat, enjoy, and think of Grandma Mel.

Makes enough for at least 8 people.

Penne alla Vodka, Take Two

Menu: Penne alla Vodka; Green Beans with Balsamic Vinaigrette; Fried Eggplant

Lessons learned:

1. Penne alla vodka is on its way back in my house!
2. I love, love, love to see my children eat my food.
3. The fried eggplant is worth it. 

It's been a good day for food at my house.  I ran a Mothers' Day 5k this morning and came back to a lovely breakfast of waffles and maple syrup prepared by my husband.  Then I treated myself to a French dip sandwich and some Pringles for lunch, it being my special weekend and all.  Then tonight, I sliced, breaded, and fried the first eggplant from my garden this year.  I put them out with just some jarred tomato sauce for an appetizer, and they were gone before I could take a picture.  Next time.

After some searching and on many people's recommendations, I decided to try Rachael Ray's "You Won't Be Single For Long" Penne alla Vodka.  I used an adaptation that I found over on Smitten Kitchen.  It was very good, but still needs some adjustments.  For one thing, I ended up with about twice as much sauce as I needed.  I also think this dish is truly naked without salted pork, so I did add about 4 ounces of bacon.  I'll post my official version when I get it perfect, but you have to admit this looks (and tasted!) leagues better than my last attempt:

At this very moment, I'm trying to resist going back for thirds.  And failing.  But we refilled my son's plate FIVE times, so I'm going to be sleeping well tonight.

Ants on a Tree

Menu: Ants on a Tree; Stir-Fried Green Beans; Sliced Apples

Lessons learned:

1. Easy on the heat while the noodles are cooking.
2. Don't forget the ginger.
3. Don't forget the bean sprouts!
4. Don't forget the brown sugar!!

I know.  "Ants on a tree" is not the most appetizing name for a recipe.  But it's really good if you can find the right balance of flavors, and I love it because it doesn't require pre-soaking the rice noodles.  Apparently, the name comes from the way the ground meat looks on the rice noodles in the original recipe.  I don't know who would want to be thinking about ants while they're eating, but the name stuck in our house.

I've made this a lot so I don't use a recipe anymore, but it's been a while so unfortunately I forgot some things.  I forgot the ginger until the noodles were already soft.  I forgot the bean sprouts until after I had already garnished with cilantro (the picture below is pre-sprout).  And I forgot the brown sugar entirely.  It was still tasty, though, and hopefully I'll get back into practice.

The original recipe calls for cooking the noodles in chicken broth, but I will often use vegetable broth, depending on what I have on hand.  I'm very partial to Wolfgang Puck's chicken broth, ran out of it a while ago, and it wasn't available at the last store where I was shopping.  What they did have was mushroom broth, which I thought could be good.  I went ahead and bought it to use here.  It was tasty, but I'm not sure I want to use it again because my protein is Quorn, which is made from fungus like mushrooms, and I don't want to overdo that element.

I wanted to dress the green beans with Ginger-Hoisin Vinaigrette, but I ran out and didn't have it together enough to make more.  The rice noodles have a lot of soy sauce, so it wasn't my first choice to use it on the veggies as well, but it was the easiest and most reliably tasty thing I could think of to do.

I'm so happy: this is the second meal in a row that Ben has eaten as is, the same way John and I eat it.  He loves flavored noodles!  AND he tried his green beans and liked them!  So he ate pretty much everything on his plate, plus seconds of the noodles.  Sophie only ate apples and the Quorn tenders from the noodles.  She asked for seconds on them, and I tried to tell her she could have seconds if she would taste a green bean.  In response, she freaked out.  I definitely think we will need to use that strategy soon, but I just don't think she's able to respond to it yet.

This dinner would have been good with a beer, but I've had alcohol several nights in a row now, so I decided I'd give it a rest.

Ants on a Tree

Vegetable oil
1/2 red onion, or more to taste, chopped
4 large garlic cloves
1 tablespoon of minced pickled ginger (I use the kind in a tube because I hate grating the real stuff)
8 ounces ground pork or other crumbled protein (I also add Quorn tenders because they're easier for the kids to eat)
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper, or more to taste
1/4 cup soy sauce
8 ounces rice noodles, medium thickness
2 cups desired broth, plus more if needed
1/4 cup rice vinegar
5 ounces bean sprouts
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped

Heat the oil at a medium setting in a large pan or 300 degree on an electric skillet.  Add the onion, garlic, ginger, protein, and pepper and saute until the onions are soft and the protein has browned.  Add the noodles, broth, soy sauce, and vinegar.  Increase the heat if necessary to bring the liquid to a simmer, and stir frequently to ensure that the noodles absorb the liquid evenly, adding more broth as needed.  When the noodles are pliant, mix in the bean sprouts and then add the sugar and sesame oil.  Garnish with cilantro just before serving.

Serves up to 4 people.

Italian Rice Salad

Menu: Italian Rice Salad; Steamed Broccoli with Lemon and Basil Oil; Strawberry-Kiwi Salad

Lessons learned:

1. Ingredients are everything.
2. Chocolate mint is my favorite mint.
3. Choosing wines by their cutesy labels usually doesn't pay off, but sometimes it does!

Italian rice salad has turned out to be one of my favorite weekday meals.  It requires very little cooking, is very hard to screw up, and it has some of my favorite flavors.  And since it goes so well with an Italian red, I just can't help opening a bottle!  Tonight I went with a 2009 Cabernet called Monogamy.  Let me just reprint what's on the back of the label:

"You know you've experimented.  It's a way to discover what you like.  And what you don't.  What makes you happy.  What satisfies your soul.  It's how you know when you've found the one.  The one that makes you say, 'Sorry, I'm with Cabernet.'  When you've met the love of your life, is there really any reason to keep looking?"

If I had read that when I bought it, I might have just put it back.  I mean, there is surely something romantic about a good glass of wine, but let's not get carried away.  Anyway, I think I got it because it was on sale at New Leaf Market.  But it's actually quite good!  I hope there's some left when I get back from the coffee shop tonight.

Tonight, after many long days, my husband was home for dinner and we all ate together!  The kids ate some prosciutto, cheese, and broccoli, but mostly loaded up on this:

OK, maybe my food photography leaves something to be desired.  I'm learning!  Anyway, those green flecks right there?  Chocolate mint.  Yeah.

But back to the rice salad.  The key is ingredients.  For almost everything in this dish, there is a cheaper substitute you could use and it would really be fine.  Instead of Arborio rice, you could just use regular white or brown rice.  Instead of prosciutto, you could use bacon, ham, or salami.  You could leave out the pine nuts entirely.  Instead of fresh mozzarella, you could use regular.  If you don't have homegrown herbs and don't want to buy fresh ones, you could use Italian seasoning.  And it would still be a decent weeknight dish that covered the bases.  But it wouldn't be something that you really look forward to eating.  And I just need to mention that I tried the fresh mozzarella from Earth Fare for the first time tonight.  SO good.  Highly, highly recommend.

I think the two most harmless substitutions would be the rice and the meat.  I'm not sure I really noticed the difference between Arborio rice and the white sushi rice we buy in a huge bag for a much better price.  Bacon instead of prosciutto would be different, but probably just about as good, since everyone in my house loves bacon.  Of course, then I'd have to cook it, and one of the things I love about this dish is that the only thing you need to cook is the rice.

So here's the recipe.  I think just about any Italian salad dressing would work pretty well, but tonight I still had some basil oil leftover from last week's soup, so I emulsified it in red wine vinegar with salt, pepper, and garlic.

Italian Rice Salad

2 cups Arborio rice
2-3 cups of fresh tomatoes
3-4 ounces prosciutto
6 ounces fresh mozzarella
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 large garlic clove
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup fresh basil
2 tablespoons fresh oregano

1/4 cup pine nuts
1/3 cup fresh grated hard Italian cheese, such as Parmiggiano-Reggiano

Cook the rice using your preferred method, leaving time for the rice to cool before mixing the salad ingredients into it.  Chop the tomatoes, prosciutto, mozarella, and herbs into bite-sized pieces.  In a small bowl, mix the garlic, salt, and pepper into the red wine vinegar, then whisk in the olive oil to emulsify it.  Mix the tomatoes and prosciutto into the cooked rice, including as much of the tomato juice as you can preserve.  Next, gently mix in the mozzarella and toss everything with the dressing, herbs, and pine nuts.  Top it off with the grated Parmiggiano-Reggiano and enjoy.

Makes 4 servings.

Arugula Salad with Strawberries, Bacon, and Mozzarella

Menu: Tomato Bread Soup; Arugula Salad with Strawberries, Bacon, and Mozzarella

Lessons learned:

1. Sometimes it's just faster to eat soup with your hands.
2. There are occasions to fry basil leaves.

Four years ago, I marked the recipe for this soup in a Williams-Sonoma cookbook about Florentine cuisine that I got for my wedding.  I don't usually get very excited about soup, so I'm not sure why this one got my attention.  But I finally got around to making it tonight.

It was ok.  You saute onions, carrots, celery, and garlic, and then add tomato paste and tomatoes.  Then you add toasted bread and water and boil it down, and finally finish it with basil oil and fried basil.  This is what you get:

It was actually much tastier than it looks.  It kind of looks like... well, I'll just let you use your imagination if you're so inclined.  The texture was off-putting.  I think I could make it look and taste a lot better, so I'll be trying it again with better bread, some wine, a little parmesan, and possibly more fresh herbs.  The basil oil and fried basil were interesting.  I think I'll keep them around on the next attempt.

It took me several minutes to plan what I was going to make with it.  Breaded eggplant would be great, but it's not in season yet.  Anything with pesto would also work, but I just planted my basil and there isn't enough to make pesto.  I finally decided on a salad using a bunch of extra stuff I had around: arugula from my garden, some bacon, fresh mozzarella, strawberries left over from yesterday's pie, and pine nuts with balsamic vinaigrette.  Generally, my intent is to save meat for special occasions, and I know there's no way I can spin it so that tonight qualifies.  Sorry, hard-core vegetarians, but every now and then I must make an exception for bacon.  And yes, I also realize this is the third night in a row I've used strawberries.  They're not in season very long here, so I'm making the most of it.

I had some nice cross-pollination, if you will, going on between the two dishes, too.  I used bacon grease to cook the veggies for the soup, and I mixed up the balsamic vinaigrette using the basil oil from the soup.

No John again.  I got the kids' plates set up with bread and the salad components, and gave them each a teeny bowl of soup.  By the time I got my own food (and wine) ready, Sophie had already eaten and left and Ben had left his chair to see what was good on Sophie's side of the table.  He had finished off his soup, trying to use his spoon at first but having better luck with his hands.  As he walked around the table, I noticed that his shorts were completely soaked through.  Not with pee.  With poop.  Off to the bathtub we went right quick.

When we were done in the bathroom, I noticed that somebody had torn our U.S. map off the wall, which meant that the pushpin holding it in place had to be on the floor somewhere.  That's not ok with toddlers around.  So with my dinner still waiting for me on the table, I searched fruitlessly all over the carpet for said solitary pushpin, finally giving up in the hope that if I couldn't find it, neither could they.  I went back to the table to eat my dinner alone.  Well, not completely alone.  I had my wine.

The salad was actually quite good, so the recipe follows.  Please know that I am not one for exact measurements, so the amounts listed are approximations.

Arugula Salad with Strawberries, Bacon, and Mozzarella

1 cup fresh-picked arugula, no stems
1/2 pound strawberries, quartered
1/2 cup fresh mozzarella, chopped
1/2 pound bacon, cooked, drained, and torn into bite-size pieces*
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1/4 cup raspberry balsamic vinegar
Pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4-1/3 cup basil oil or regular extra-virgin olive oil

Combine the arugula, strawberries, mozzarella, and bacon in a serving bowl.  In a small mixing bowl, combine the vinegar, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  Emulsify the oil into the vinegar by drizzling it in slowly while whisking as quick as you can.  Pour the dressing over the salad, toss, and sprinkle with pine nuts.

Makes just enough to serve two.

*I already had bacon in the house, but if I were shopping specifically for this salad, I'd spring for some pancetta or prosciutto.

Some variations I think would be good:

Replace the strawberries with cantaloupe, OR
Skip the bacon and pine nuts, and replace the mozzarella with goat cheese and parmesan.