We've got this itch to start on stuff now that I am home to help equally. I'm a little more itchy than the Hubs with me being the freshest retiree, but still.
Our land is mostly dirt except for the amazing trees that have been here since the early 1900s, when the house was built. Other than the house, the garage, a 50 foot gravel drive and the trees that have been here forever and the little sculpted areas for garden and herbs, and the Kalamata olives, Pomegranates and Mission Fig trees, the space is woefully underutilized.
The problem is how to take what I'm imagining and make it real.
A few years back we tried and failed. I had this great vision of a rock and tanbark front space with a walking trail and benches and an open space for wildflowers. It would have plantings and little funky decorations like a vintage metal headboard and yard art. The bees and butterflies would come and we'd sit on our little bench and enjoy them with the ferals Bob, Rook and Smudge.
I had internet pictures. I had a crew. We had the Hubs with a tractor and a big load of rock. Let's just say it didn't exactly go as planned.
So after licking my wounds for lack of preparation, needless effort and expense - not to mention creating a whole big mess to clean up - it has stayed that way a long time. The Hubs and a friend made some progress but the yard is a wreck. And working FT, I couldn't find the energy to get out there and make a dent.
Failure has a way of sparking new ideas, though.
Like, we need a design. On paper. By someone who knows this stuff. A design we can understand and achieve. And someone to design the irrigation so everything stays alive. Something to follow.
So this is our dream space.
Leave about 30% of the untamed space in back alone. The target range stays and we'll add an activity course for the dogs. It should blend with our homestead and the community: simple, purposeful, and casually containable. We'll need space in back for entertaining and plant a stand of fruit trees to give us more fruit varieties since I'm so into canning.
We definitely need some grass to romp and play and lots of indigenous plants with room to nestle seasonal garden veggies around. My herb garden stays. I guess in the end we want things we can eat and purposeful plantings and butterfly/bee/hummingbird loving trellised vines - plus lemongrass, citronella, and lemon for the natural mosquito repellant we make.
Oh, is that all.
So on Monday, Kimberly the Visionary will be here. She specializes in natural and functional designs for our zone. I'm excited.
Recipes * Critters * Garden * Stories *
Saturday, March 9, 2019
Friday, March 8, 2019
Not MY Nana's Meat Sauce
I am Midwestern, a mix of Scottish/English/French, and I'm lucky to come from a long line of frugal, hearty cooks. We're big stick-to-your-bones kind of cooks, and keep-you-warm-in-a-blizzard cooks. I didn't grow up in the Midwest but my parents did, and they did the raising.
The one and only spaghetti sauce I know is a red sauce with browned hamburger meat with some onions and spices, cooked up in about 30 minutes (less if you were using a jarred sauce). Through the years I've worked to improve the basic sauce with longer simmering times, fresh ingredients, freshly picked herbs, more garlic or a spoonful of pesto, but it pretty much resembles the original version.
And then last week I found something called Sunday Gravy. Man! Those Italians know how to keep a secret. The back history of the sauce is that Italian families have made Sunday Gravy for generations and passed the recipe and basic principles for making it from mother to daughter. It's completely adaptable, and an added plus is it transforms leftovers with an amazing sauce that tastes like nothing I've ever had. Apparently each new generation can totally make it their own without sacrificing the original flavor they remember as kids.
An Italian friend who didn't know the term Sunday Gravy until I described it, said, 'Oooh! That's the refrigerator gravy my grandmother made because she used up all her meat leftovers. We had it all the time.'
And that made me love it even more, because people like me who hate to waste food love anything that disguises leftovers into an amazing meal.
So I gave the recipe a try. We had it, we loved it, we shared it, they loved it, so it's definitely blog worthy.
Here is the amazing original post and long version of the sauce with, of course, the recipe: http://www.platingsandpairings.com/authentic-italian-sunday-gravy/
I have this need to give recipes my personal spin. So ...
- I didn't toss the garlic, because you don't do that.. And I increased the amount.
- I added in more seasonings.
- I cooked it all afternoon, in a Dutch oven at 325 degrees, not on the stovetop. My stove tends to run a little hot and I didn't want to burn the sauce and I didn't want to stand guard over it.
- I found there was so much meat in the sauce I ended up increasing the ingredients to compensate for it. Plenty of meat for tripling the original recipe. Basically I doubled the meat and ended up quadrupling the ingredients to keep up with how beefy it was.
In a large Dutch Oven:
Step 1 - brown all the meat in oil, and set it aside on a plate
1 lb or less each of pork - beef - and Italian sausage (cooked or not; anything you have on hand)
Step 2 - turn down the heat, toss in 10 cloves of garlic to soften and scrape up stuff from the bottom.
Step 3 - add most everything to the pot except meat:
One onion, roughly chopped
Tomato product: 135 ozs of a combo of crushed tomatoes, diced, stewed, or garden/canned or frozen fresh.
Some fresh basil leaves
A couple of branches of fresh Marjoram (just toss it in, stem and all)
2 bay leaves
Salt and Pepper (I leave the salt out until the end)
Any other favorite sauce flavorings
A couple of carrots sliced 1/4 inch thick, because I am wild for them in pasta sauce
Step 4 - Nestle the meat back in and bake it
If the meat is a little cramped, that's okay. If you're genuinely short of sauce, add broth and mess with it. Once everything looks good, put the Dutch Oven in the oven on a mid level shelf - covered - at 325 for about 4 hours. I checked it once an hour, because the aroma pretty much made it impossible not to.
At about the 2 hour mark taste for the kind of flavor you want - super meaty and deep. You can remove some of the meat here if you'd like. I left the sausage in for good.
Step 5 - After it cooks awhile and flavors do their thing, remove the meat and pork chunks to a plate - and work on the broth.
Late adds/adjustments:
To thin: Add broth (beef or pork), and I did use at least a quart
To deepen the tomato-y flavor: Add tomato paste, up to 6 oz
By now, The Gravy is delicious enough without the meat, but I added it back in to my sauce. Personal preference, I guess.
The Gravy was served over linguine that night with some fresh parmesan, green salad and a sourdough baguette. Two nights later we had it again, this time over homemade ravioli from Jackson CA, and it was also excellent. I hear it's great over polenta and mashed potatoes.
I pressure canned the rest in pints, sure that it will be our reach-for sauce for entertaining, gifting, and when we are out on the road. The canned sauce definitely needs a little thinning, so a pint is plenty for four mouths if served with sides and some bread. As my mother would say, Delish.
PS I started another batch last night.
The one and only spaghetti sauce I know is a red sauce with browned hamburger meat with some onions and spices, cooked up in about 30 minutes (less if you were using a jarred sauce). Through the years I've worked to improve the basic sauce with longer simmering times, fresh ingredients, freshly picked herbs, more garlic or a spoonful of pesto, but it pretty much resembles the original version.
And then last week I found something called Sunday Gravy. Man! Those Italians know how to keep a secret. The back history of the sauce is that Italian families have made Sunday Gravy for generations and passed the recipe and basic principles for making it from mother to daughter. It's completely adaptable, and an added plus is it transforms leftovers with an amazing sauce that tastes like nothing I've ever had. Apparently each new generation can totally make it their own without sacrificing the original flavor they remember as kids.
An Italian friend who didn't know the term Sunday Gravy until I described it, said, 'Oooh! That's the refrigerator gravy my grandmother made because she used up all her meat leftovers. We had it all the time.'
And that made me love it even more, because people like me who hate to waste food love anything that disguises leftovers into an amazing meal.
So I gave the recipe a try. We had it, we loved it, we shared it, they loved it, so it's definitely blog worthy.
Here is the amazing original post and long version of the sauce with, of course, the recipe: http://www.platingsandpairings.com/authentic-italian-sunday-gravy/
 |
| Browning |
- I didn't toss the garlic, because you don't do that.. And I increased the amount.
- I added in more seasonings.
- I cooked it all afternoon, in a Dutch oven at 325 degrees, not on the stovetop. My stove tends to run a little hot and I didn't want to burn the sauce and I didn't want to stand guard over it.
- I found there was so much meat in the sauce I ended up increasing the ingredients to compensate for it. Plenty of meat for tripling the original recipe. Basically I doubled the meat and ended up quadrupling the ingredients to keep up with how beefy it was.
 |
| The sauce starting out |
Step 1 - brown all the meat in oil, and set it aside on a plate
1 lb or less each of pork - beef - and Italian sausage (cooked or not; anything you have on hand)
Step 2 - turn down the heat, toss in 10 cloves of garlic to soften and scrape up stuff from the bottom.
Step 3 - add most everything to the pot except meat:
One onion, roughly chopped
Tomato product: 135 ozs of a combo of crushed tomatoes, diced, stewed, or garden/canned or frozen fresh.
 |
| Browned Meats, added to sauce |
A couple of branches of fresh Marjoram (just toss it in, stem and all)
2 bay leaves
Salt and Pepper (I leave the salt out until the end)
Any other favorite sauce flavorings
A couple of carrots sliced 1/4 inch thick, because I am wild for them in pasta sauce
Step 4 - Nestle the meat back in and bake it
If the meat is a little cramped, that's okay. If you're genuinely short of sauce, add broth and mess with it. Once everything looks good, put the Dutch Oven in the oven on a mid level shelf - covered - at 325 for about 4 hours. I checked it once an hour, because the aroma pretty much made it impossible not to.
At about the 2 hour mark taste for the kind of flavor you want - super meaty and deep. You can remove some of the meat here if you'd like. I left the sausage in for good. Step 5 - After it cooks awhile and flavors do their thing, remove the meat and pork chunks to a plate - and work on the broth.
Late adds/adjustments:
To thin: Add broth (beef or pork), and I did use at least a quart
To deepen the tomato-y flavor: Add tomato paste, up to 6 oz
By now, The Gravy is delicious enough without the meat, but I added it back in to my sauce. Personal preference, I guess.
The Gravy was served over linguine that night with some fresh parmesan, green salad and a sourdough baguette. Two nights later we had it again, this time over homemade ravioli from Jackson CA, and it was also excellent. I hear it's great over polenta and mashed potatoes.
I pressure canned the rest in pints, sure that it will be our reach-for sauce for entertaining, gifting, and when we are out on the road. The canned sauce definitely needs a little thinning, so a pint is plenty for four mouths if served with sides and some bread. As my mother would say, Delish.
PS I started another batch last night.
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