is...spaghetti, a catch all word meaning tomato based sauce, long skinny pasta, and homemade focaccia. I've made pasta from scratch exactly twice, and believe firmly that, while it's tasty, it's not really worth the effort.
Sauce:
1 large can each of petite diced tomatoes and crushed tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste
1 lb hamburger, browned and drained
1 large onion, peeled and cut in quarters (explanation later)
as many cloves of garlic as you can possibly stand (I use 6 or 7), minced
Fresh basil, parsley, oregano, rosemary, all chopped fine (alot, like, 1/4 cup of each except less of the rosemary)
salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes to taste
A good dollop of red wine (Cabernet, or merlot)
Mix it all together in a big pot and simmer for an hour or so. Then fish out the onion and throw it away. This gives you oniony flavor without having chunks of slimy stuff in your sauce. (Thanks to Bro. Scott for telling me that trick)
Focaccia
1 cup warm milk
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
Mix it all together and let it sit 10 minutes. Then stir in
2 cups of all purpose or bread flour
Mix this good then add 1 more cup of flour
If your lazy like me, you'll fix this in a stand mixer, and let it do the work of kneading. If you're a Back To The Earth type who believes handling food is like getting close to God (me, sometimes, if I've been into the merlot for the sauce), dump the dough onto a well floured countertop and pummel it like it's your neighbor's yappy-assed little dog. Do this for 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and satiny. Then coat it lightly in olive oil and put it in a bowl, covered, in a warm spot for an hour to double in size.
Lightly oil a cookie sheet, or a jellyroll pan, if you have one. Pat the dough out so it covers the pan, then use your fingertips to dimple it all over. Sprinkle with kosher salt, cracked pepper, chopped rosemary, or anything else you think would be good. Maybe sundried tomatoes and basil leaves, or parmesan cheese. Then drizzle lightly with some more olive oil, and let rise for 20 minutes.
Bake in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. Cut into squares or rip it apart like a barbarian, it's up to you.
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6 comments:
My idea of home made is adding meat and extra spices to cans of sauce.
*grin*
I admire you.
Try a couple of scrapes of nutmeg into the browning meat, cook meat until sticky bits form and adhere onto the bottom of the pan ... draining fat as required, then deglaze with milk ... that's right ... milk .... and then cook down until liquid is gone. The meat will become very, very tender. I ran across this in a Bolognese spaghetti sauce recipe, and tried it - it works, and it's really, really good.
Huh! Milk...go figure. I'll try it next time.
cooked onions are "slimy?"
i tend to not like red/marinara sauce. i make pasta with odd little sauces of my own concoction. one is just garlic and olive oil and cherry tomatoes, pierced with a fork to let their juice help cook into a very thin "sauce," then thickened at the last with a good romano.
another started out as a sort of carbonara, but now i don't use ham; instead it's egg yolk, lemon juice, and olive oil (mixed very lightly so as not to turn it into mayo); again, add Romano, and then a whole bunch of chopped chives. "cook" just enough by stirring into hot drained pasta (off the stove).
and then there's always the standby alfredo, which i really do far too often. i use half and half instead of full cream, but still...
Oo Belle, yum! Alfredo's a little rich for my taste, but that egg and oil thing sounds really tasty! Reckon how it would be to infuse the oil with garlic before mixing in.
and yeah, I think cooked onions are slimy. I admit that it's a purely subjective thing, tho.
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