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.