Maman's Red Sauce with Meat

The Maman dictated this recipe to me as I was about to go off to the store. There were a couple gaps, but we filled them in as we went along and this is the complete version.

This is a very simple version of a ragu, and it can be fancied up with different ground meats (including Italian sausage meat) or even with a piece of braising meat, which you would brown, cook until extremely tender, and then shred back into the sauce.

2 tbsp. butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 green pepper, membranes and seeds removed, finely chopped
2-4 cloves garlic
1 lb. ground beef or other meats
1 28 oz. can tomato puree
2 6 oz. cans tomato paste
2 tsp. dried basil leaves (or about 4 tsp. fresh)
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. freshly ground fennel seeds (optional)
1/2-1 cup red wine

Melt the butter in a large skillet, dutch oven, or stock pot. Saute the onion and green pepper until the pepper is soft, about ten minutes. The pepper should fade to a dimmer green along the way. Add the garlic for the last couple of minutes, just until you can smell it among the cooked onion and pepper smell. You can optionally take out the onion/garlic mixture while you brown the beef.

Add the beef and stir to brown evenly, breaking it up as you go. Drain fat if necessary and then add the tomato puree and paste. Stir in the seasonings and turn to low. Add about 1/2 cup of the wine, with more or water added as you go along to keep the sauce thinned to your taste. You need to stir it often enough -- and add enough liquid -- so that it does not stick to the bottom of the pot, where it will scorch and, if you are so foolish to then stir it up, ruin the entire batch. (Alternately, you can use a crockpot for the simmering, in which case the bottom doesn't scorch, but the edge of the top gradually develops a burned crust that will take you two hours to clean off. Or transfer to the oven at 350° to simmer.)

It will be perfectly edible after a half-hour or so, but it will get better over the next couple of hours. Some people say you should always put the entire sauce away for a day and reheat it for best results. OK, but what did you eat the first day?

If you open a bottle of red wine to use in the dish, you can drink some as you cook, but try to avoid drinking so much that you forget about the sauce and go to bed.

Serve over pasta. Leftovers can be frozen in small containers (one or two cups), or (special bonus recipe) combined with fresh or leftover cooked pasta -- macaroni, penne, and fusilli all work fine -- in a ratio of about 2 cups cooked pasta (1 lb. dried pasta = 4 cups uncooked = 8 cups cooked) to 1 cup sauce and baked in a casserole somewhere between 350° and 400° for about a half-hour. Top with grated mozzarella, and if you really want to push the whole Fake Lasagne thing, put in a layer of ricotta in the middle.

Final note: some find this recipe a little thin on meat. If so, you can remedy by:

• carefully cooking down so there is less liquid;
• using a little more ground beef (say, another third of a pound); or
• adding one uncooked Italian sausage, removed from its skin and crumbled in when you brown the beef.

Simple Chili

I'm not sure whether this recipe appears exactly somewhere else. It's easy to remember, anyway.

The fact that we serve it over pasta is a nod to Cincinnati chili, which I made a version of for a while. But everyone told me to stop and we retreated to this more basic rendition. Except that it still gets served over pasta.

The choice of chili powder and of optional fresh or dried chile gives you a lot of room to adjust the heat. Standard supermarket chili powder is pretty bland, and name brand powders may be hotter and more flavorful. McCormick's makes a Chipotle chili powder that's reasonably fierce for a supermarket product. In some markets you can find powdered chile, which has no other spices (salt, oregano, and cumin are typical). You can even buy some dried chiles, remove membranes and seeds (or not, if you are extremely brave), roast them in the oven or a dry frying pan until they start to crisp, and then use a spice grinder to make your own freshly powdered chile, whose flavor should be very bright. If you do this, add in a little more cumin and other seasonings to taste, and consider additional salt.

2 tbsp. butter
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 lb. ground beef
1 tbsp. chili powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 fresh or dried chile (optional)
1 14-1/2 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 14-1/2 oz. can cooked kidney beans
Tabasco or other hot sauce to taste
Condiments: grated cheese, raw onions or shallots, minced jalapeno, etc.

Melt the butter in a large skillet, dutch oven, or stock pot. Saute the onion until translucent. Add the garlic for the last minute or two. If you prefer, you can take out the onion/garlic mixture while you brown the beef.

Add the ground beef, breaking it up with a spoon or spatula while stirring it so that it gets evenly ground. You may add the chili powder and cumin while browning it, but if you're using a very fatty ground beef and will have to drain it after browning, you may want to wait.

Drain the beef if necessary, add the onions and garlic if you removed them, and add the seasonings if you haven't already, including the optional minced fresh or dried chile. Add the diced tomatoes with their juices and adjust to a simmer. Cook for a half-hour or so, though you can leave it there essentially forever, maybe adding a little water or beer from time to time to keep it from getting too thick.

About ten minutes before serving, drain the kidney beans well (I rinse them off in a strainer) and add to the pot. If you prefer a less separate bean flavor, add them sooner. But if the beans sit in the chili for hours, the whole thing will start to melt into an indistinct chili-ish mass. Which is fine if you like that.

Serve over pasta, if you like, with such condiments as appeal to you passed around at table.

Genevieve's Fravorite (Ground Beef Stroganoff)

This one came from a cookbook I don't even own anymore: the edition of Fanny Farmer just before Marion Cunningham took it over and got all fna-fna (Susan please correct spelling) "We don't cook with Campbell's soups." It's cool, Marion had the right idea; I'm still a little ashamed of this 50's era dish.

All the same, Genevieve has fed it to many of her friends (secretly, and only leftovers, at first; I think she knew I wouldn't volunteer to make it for strangers), and declares that they, as well, consider it food.

2 tbsp. butter
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. mushrooms, sliced
1-2 tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 can Campbell's "Healthy Bequest Request" Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 cup (8 0z.) sour cream

I use a 12-inch non-stick electric skillet to make this. If you don't have one, you probably should just go buy one. 11 inches would do, but a round 12-inch skillet is 31 sq. in. shy and a bit too shallow as well.

How much garlic flavor you want is a choice. You can chop the garlic finely and include it in the last couple minutes of cooking the onion for a distinctive, strong flavor; or you can put peeled cloves on toothpicks for most of the cooking process and fish them out at the last minute for a much milder flavor. Unpeeled would probably be milder still.

Heat the butter and saute the onion until translucent. If desired, include chopped garlic for the last minute or so. If you want to keep the onion flavor separate, remove it and set aside. Put in the ground beef and turn the heat up, breaking the beef up as it cooks. When it is all cooked, you may drain some of the fat if you like.

Stir in the mushrooms and flour (less if you drained fat off, more if you didn't). Lower the heat and cover the skillet, cooking for about five minutes, or until the mushrooms start to look cooked.

Stir in the cream of mushroom soup and return to low heat. This is one of the two places you could return the onions, if you removed them. It will take fifteen or twenty minutes for the whole thing to come together.

Check the seasoning, and add salt and/or pepper to taste as necessary. This is the other point at which you could return the onions. Stir in the sour cream. Some like it thoroughly mixed in, some like it stirred less, kind of streaky. Cook it only briefly and don't let it boil with the sour cream.

Serve over rice. I know, I know, regular beef stroganoff is over noodles. Get it through your head, this isn't regular beef stroganoff.

Big Batch Vegetarian Red Sauce

This recipe is pretty seriously cribbed from Bob Sloan's Dad's Own Cook Book, which has at least the minimum number of usable recipes (3) to justify its space on the shelf. My changes are absolutely crucial and remove any question of copyright violation.

Actually, before we get started, let's talk about tomatoes. It is, of course, possible to make a tomato sauce starting with fresh tomatoes rather than canned. But I don't see why you'd bother, unless you're making one of those uncooked fresh tomato sauces that is really something else entirely.

So, what canned tomatoes? The original recipe calls for crushed tomatoes, but that just doesn't sit right with me. Even settling on whole tomatoes still leaves lots of choices. Some people like San Marzano tomatoes, though this merely starts another argument about what really defines San Marzanos. Some like Glen Muir Organic Tomatoes. Some insist the tomatoes must come in tomato juice, not puree. Some say that the sauce won't cook down properly if the tomatoes have calcium chloride added.

Here's what I suggest: buy the most expensive Italian San Marzano D.O.P. tomatoes with as few additives as possible, and make a sauce. The next time, go to the Dollar Tree and buy Uncle Ernie's Holiday Camp Tomatoes. If you can't tell the difference, well, there you are. If you can, interpolate.

2-3 tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped or grated
1 green or red bell pepper, seeds and membranes removed, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 - 1 cup red wine
2 28 oz. cans tomatoes
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
2 tsp. dried basil or 1 tsp. dried and 2 tbsp. chopped fresh
3 tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
2 tsp. dried oregano
1-1/2 tsp. salt
Pepper to taste
2 cups water

In a large pot, with a heavy bottom (unless you don't mind stirring constantly to avoid scorching), heat the oil until a drop of water sizzles in it. Add the onion, celery, carrots, and green or red pepper. Cook, stirring, until most of the moisture is gone and the carrots begin to soften, 8 minutes or so if grated. Add the garlic and cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the wine and raise the heat, cooking until the liquid begins to thicken. Break up the tomatoes by hand and add them, along with the tomato paste, dried basil, about half the parsley, the oregano, salt, pepper, and water.

Lower the heat and stir the first few minutes until there is a low, steady bubbling. Simmer, continuing to stir now and then, for an hour or so. At this point, you could:

• Serve the sauce with chunky vegetables;
• Use a food mill to process the liquid into a thin tomato sauce (a passata, I think), discarding the solid vegetables;
• Use the food mill in multiple passes to grind the solids, producing a thick, smooth, sauce (Papa's favorite);
• Use a food processor to puree the sauce, if you don't mind it turning slightly orange;
• Use a blender, if you don't mind the orange and also don't mind the vague sense that you're producing the base for a Bloody Mary Smoothie.

Or continue to cook the sauce further, choosing any of the above options after the sauce has cooked down further. Somewhere late in the process, add fresh basil, if you are using it. Fresh basil is probably wasted (compared to dried) if it is added first thing, but that works, too. I recommend dried basil early, and fresh at the last minute. You can use the rest of a bunch of basil to make pesto.

Serve with pasta. Or vodka and tabasco.

Red Beans and Rice

This is one of the versions that the late Jeff Smith published; it appeared in his first book, The Frugal Gourmet. It's simple and basic, but it gets the job done. Every other recipe I've ever seen is either obviously bad in some way (one wants you to use canned pinto beans) or involves baroque ingredients like pickled pork that are difficult to obtain and/or prepare.

Note the presence of the "holy trinity" of Creole cooking, onion, green pepper, and celery. I've seen recipes using scallions instead, which can be OK (I had scallions in a fine version in New Orleans once), but don't make this without all three ingredients. Oh, and don't forget that this is traditionally a Monday dinner.

1/2 lb. small dried red beans
1/2 lb. ham hocks or smoked ham (have a bone in there if you can)
1 chopped yellow onion
3 stalks chopped celery
1/2 chopped green pepper
1 tbsp. parsley
2 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic
4 tbsp. butter or margarine
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
Tabasco, salt, and pepper to taste

3 cups cooked white rice (1 cup raw or a bit more)

Soak the beans overnight in water, covering them by at least an inch. (If you forget this, Julia Child has a method involving an extra hour of cooking instead. Either I did it wrong or it doesn't work.) Drain the beans, and put in a heavy cooking pot with the ham, onion, celery, parsley, bay leaves, and garlic. Add water to just cover, bring to a boil, and then turn down so that it simmers. Keep an eye on it, adding water as necessary to keep the beans covered.

Cook uncovered or just lightly covered for about two hours, and then add the green pepper, butter or margarine (I'm told it must be margarine for authentic New Orleans-ness, but I've never tried it, because we never have margarine), Worcestershire, and Tabasco. Simmer for an additional hour with the lid of the pot on.

If you used ham hocks, at some point in the last hour fish them out and pull the meat off the bone. Chop up the good meat (ham hocks usually have some rasty stuff you'll just want to discard) and return it to the pot with the bones.

Serve over the white rice.

Macaroni and Cheese

There are six trillion recipes for something like macaroni and cheese. The food writer John Thorne once condemned all versions that have a white sauce base. Well, fine, be that way, but his book's out of print. And I've tried his, and it's fine, but it sure won't reheat.

This recipe, scaled up from the one in Craig Claiborne's Kitchen Primer, is what we have always eaten.

12 oz. uncooked macaroni (3 cups), or 6 cups cooked pasta or noodles

Cheese sauce:
3 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. flour
3 cups hot milk (whole milk best; nonfat is too grainy)
3/8 tsp. nutmeg
3/16 tsp. cayenne pepper (or 1/8 tsp. plus some Tabasco)
salt and pepper to taste
3 cups grated or cubedsharp cheddar cheese

3 tbsp. grated Parmesan or Asiago

Cook the macaroni and drain. Unless you have the cheese sauce ready, rinse with cold water, shaking or stirring to avoid clumps, and drain thoroughly when cold.

Make the cheese sauce: melt the butter, add the flour, and whisk for a couple of minutes. Add the hot milk (microwave works well to heat it up) bit by bit, and when it is hot and bubbly, add the nutmeg, cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste. Remove from the heat and stir in all the cheese, switching from the whisk to a large spoon.

Grease a 3 qt. baking dish or two smaller ones. Put the macaroni in and pour the cheese sauce over it. If you use two small baking dishes, or a single very large flat one, this can go directly into the oven at 375° for about a half-hour, but if you use a large one with more cubical proportions, the top will burn before the middle is hot, so you need to heat it in the microwave for ten or fifteen minutes, stirring every few minutes to heat uniformly. Then put into the 375° oven. Or bake at 325° for an hour or so and then raise the heat to 375°.

Craig Claiborne wants you to put dots of butter all over the top of the casserole and then sprinkle the Parmesan (or Asiago) over it. I think this is supposed to avoid crustiness on the top. Why would you want to do that? In our family, the crusty part is prized. Just sprinkle the cheese over when you put it in the oven.

Spaghetti Alla Carbonara

Almost all versions of this recipe are tarted up in some way that seems pretentious to me. Prosciutto, Cream, Mushrooms, separated egg yolks and whites... This basic recipe, using only ingredients that can be obtained just as well in Arnold, CA as in Berkeley, comes from the so-far-out-of-print-it's-not-funny Food Stamp Gourmet (1971, Bellerophon Books).

1 lb. spaghetti (vermicelli works better, but is hard to find; they have stopped selling it because I like it)
4 eggs
1/2 lb. bacon
5 cloves garlic
1/2-3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan or asiago cheese, with more to serve
Pepper to taste

Cut the uncooked bacon crosswise into thin slices and fry over low heat, stirring to separate the slices. Don't get it completely crispy, but it should be beyond the chewy-fatty stage. If you don't almost have the pasta done when this is done, put it on the lowest heat possible while you do the rest.

Beat the eggs with a whisk or fork. Finely chop the garlic. Boil water and cook the spaghetti. When the pasta is almost done, add the garlic to the bacon, raising the heat if necessary to cook the garlic.

Drain the pasta and dump it back into the cooking pot. Pour the bacon, grease and all, into the pasta. Immediately add the beaten eggs and stir like a wild man; the idea is to scramble the eggs in little bits with the bacon and grease.

Once this seems to have stabilized, sprinkle the cheese in and stir until it is incorporated. Add pepper to taste, and salt, if you somehow are so salt-deprived that the salt in the bacon is not enough.

Serve from the cooking vessel with extra cheese at the table.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

This is pretty much Fanny Farmer's recipe. I changed it slightly to make it denser in tuna and bigger.

This recipe is more complicated than the usual dump-everything-together version, but the results reward the extra effort. The biggest pain is having to hard-boil the eggs beforehand, but hey, shouldn't you always have hard-boiled eggs around? (Warning: do not go to a dive bar and buy pickled hard-boiled eggs instead.)

3 cups cooked noodles (1-1/2 cups uncooked; about 3/8 lb.)

3 cups white sauce:
5 tbsp. butter
5 tbsp. flour
3 cups milk (nonfat OK, but 1% or higher works better)

4 tbsp. butter
3/4 lb. mushrooms, sliced (about 3 cups)
1 cup breadcrumbs

2 small cans tuna (6-7 oz.)
5 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
1-1/2 tbsp. minced onion or shallot

You can cook the noodles beforehand, drain them, and rinse them in cold water. Or, if you are good at it, you can time the cooking so that you drain them just before putting them into the casserole. (I am not good at it.)

Melt the butter for the white sauce in a large saucepan. Whisk in the flour to form a roux and cook a couple minutes at least. Don't brown the roux unless you're headed off into some weird New Orleans version. Add the milk; the sauce will thicken better if you've heated the milk in a microwave first. If you add the milk little by little, it seems to take less time to thicken, but maybe that's just because you're doing more than just standing there whisking. Which is what you do until the white sauce is thick and bubbling. Remove from heat.

Simultaneously, with your other pair of hands, saute the mushrooms in a couple of the 4 tbsp. of butter. When they're done, fish them out with something like a slotted spoon, leaving as much behind as possible. (If you overcook them and have a lot of juices in the pan, just remove everything and use more butter.) Then saute the bread crumbs in the rest of the butter, getting them toasty but not dark brown.

Butter or Pam a baking dish or casserole (2 quarts or so). Put the noodles, tuna, eggs, onions, and mushrooms in and pour the white sauce over. Stir gently to mix. Cover with the bread crumbs and bake about a half-hour in a 350° oven. Or, before adding the crumbs, microwave for ten minutes or so, stirring once, and then top with the crumbs and bake about ten more minutes.

If the casserole is hot but the crumbs aren't brown, you can put it under the broiler for a couple minutes, but some baking dishes aren't broiler-friendly and may explode, putting out your ferret's remaining eye.

List of Recipes

This really should be something like a Table of Contents. Request others, I'll edit.

• Tuna Noodle Casserole
• Macaroni and Cheese
• Red Beans and Rice
• Boeuf Bourgignon
• Clam Shaush Pashta
• Cuban Black Beans
• Paul's Favorite (Pasta w/ Salami & Summer Squash)
• Genevieve's Fravorite (Ground Beef Stroganoff)
• Spaghetti alla Carbonara
• Maman's Red Sauce with Meat
• Simple Chili
• Simple Vegetarian Red Sauce
• Big Batch Vegetarian Red Sauce
• Pasta with Feta Cheese and Cherry Tomatoes
• Pasta with Chicken, Broccoli, and Gorgonzola Cheese
• Meatloaf