Spaghetti

Can one ever tire of home made spaghetti, that being comprised of good Italian pasta, Angel Hair, and a home made sauce made from canned fireroasted organic tomatoes from Muir Glen, and good beef (no bad stuff in it, raised right, pastured, no hormones, etc.) …

I say no. I’m in a cooking rut. 🙂

So it’s for dinner tonight, was just a few nights ago as well. It’s the easiest thing for me to make. It’s involved, but really, not much involved. It’s about being good and seeming to be easy to make.

I chop up onion (sweet like Maui or Vidalia) and garlic finely diced, into olive oil in cast iron skillet. Ground chuck goes in, crumble it and brown it in the onion/garlic/olive oil goodness. Open the cans of tomatoes, pour the contents into the pan, stir. Allow to heat up, stirring occasionally. Add in sea salt to taste, fresh or dried herbs like Basil, more of that, Oregano, way less of that, Parsley, a big handful of that. Allow sauce to bubble, the longer it does, it tastes better in the end. You can do this in a half hour, but an hour or more, slowly letting it bubble, is scrumptious.

Heat up water and cook the pasta.

Get out a jar of green pimento stuffed olives. Open the jar and pull out as many olives as you want. Take each olive and twist it between your fingers to break it into two or more parts and ensure there are no pitts left in any of the olives. Put the olives one by one into the sauce. Stir in and when the olives warm up you can serve it, or allow it to cook longer. Cook to your choice of texture, longer cooking breaks down the tomatoes. You can add in some tomato paste and water to get a thicker smooth sauce base. Or use another product, like strained tomatoes, no extra water necessary.

Serve pasta on plate with sauce over top, or put together into a large bowl and toss together, serving from pasta bowl on table.

Have fresh cheese to grate and sprinkle overtop each plate, if desire.

I like Parmigiano-Reggiano, as well as Grana Padano ; but mostly now I prefer Pecorino Romano … all of them, though, in the best form you can find, whole pieces to grate fresh, raw milk cheeses. Parmigiano Reggiano is really good, but if you haven’t had sheeps milk cheese you mightn’t know that the Pecorino Romano is out of this world … Pecorino standing for “sheep milk” cheese, as opposed to the usual cow milk cheese.

So that’s what I call Spaghetti. I never get tired of it. Not yet, at least.