Dear John: Spaghetti with Meatballs and Sausage, and Grandma B's Amazing Sauce

Background: John Tyree has come home to Wilmington, North Carolina on furlough after three years of active duty in the Army. He's been spending his days on Wrightsville Beach surfing. One day he meets Savannah, who has come to Wrightsville for a month with a group of college students, who are building a house with Habitat for Humanity. For the next couple of weeks, until it's time for John to return to Germany where he is stationed, John and Savannah spend most of their time together when Savannah isn't working on the Habitat house. After John returns to active duty, they write to each other almost constantly, and count the days until they will see each other again.

John's father lives alone in the modest house in Wilmington where John grew up. John barely remembers his mother; she had left him and his father when John was very young. The two have never had a close relationship, however; John's father has always been quiet and reserved; often spending hours at a time with his extensive coin collection. John had been quite rebellious as a teenager, and joining the Army was a way for him to get away from his father.

The night John came home on leave, his father brought him to the house and cooked spaghetti, as he had done every Friday night of John's life. It was comforting in a way for John to come home to find things pretty much the same at home as they had always been, right down to the daily eggs, bacon, and toast every morning and the spaghetti every Friday night. John's father looked older and more tired, however, and even though the two hadn't seen each other in three years, they couldn't seem to find much to talk about. That was how it always had been.

Now, if I were cooking spaghetti on a Friday night, I would open up a jar of Ragu', maybe brown up a little meat, and call it done. But since this blog is for the most part a weekend project, I decided that the day after Hurricane Irene (a Sunday) was a great day to make my mother-in-law's special pasta sauce. Or "gravy," as she calls it.

GRANDMA B'S AMAZING PASTA SAUCE

First, make the meatballs.

When Grandma makes them, she soaks some bread in milk, and then mixes it with a couple of pounds ground beef along with some chopped fresh parsley, an egg, some salt and pepper. Since mine need to be gluten, dairy, and egg-free, I put about a cup Organ All-Purpose Rice Crumbs in a bowl with a little rice milk to moisten it; then I mixed it in with the ground beef, along with approx. 2 T each of chopped parsley and thyme, and a heaping half tablespoon (which is just about a whole tablespoon, really) of Ener-G Egg Replacer mixed with two tablespoons of water. The meatballs should be about an inch and a half in diameter.

My dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free supplies

For the sauce:

1 to 2 lbs meatballs

1 to 2 lbs Italian sausage links (hot or mild. Grandma uses a mixture of both, and cuts the hot ones in half so folks can tell the difference. Me? I go for all hot.)

1 medium onion, diced

2 to 3 cloves finely chopped garlic (For the record, I almost always double or triple the number of garlic cloves my recipe calls for. But you can do whatever you want.)

1 small (6-oz) can tomato paste

1 large (28-oz) can tomato puree

2 large (28-oz) cans tomato sauce

red wine

basil leaves (if fresh, says Grandma. But a dried bay leaf or two will do in a pinch.)

Brown sausage in a large saucepot; remove and set aside. Brown meatballs and remove; drain off most of the fat. (I don't necessarily cook the meat all the way through, because later it will cook in the sauce for several hours.) In the same saucepot, sautee onions and garlic over medium heat until they begin to soften; add the tomato paste and cook for about a minute, stirring frequently. DO NOT BURN.

I use so much meat, I need to brown it in two pots. Here's my local free-range hot Italian sausage.

Don't worry about the browned bits that stick to the bottom of the pot.

Fill the tomato paste can with wine; add to the pot and cook for another minute, stirring frequently. Ad puree and bring to a simmer; add sauce and bring to a simmer again. Add salt and pepper to taste; add basil (or bay leaves) if available. Bring to a simmer. Add sausage and meatballs to sauce; bring to a simmer. Cover and turn heat to very low. Keep covered on very low heat for 2 to 3 hours, stirring every 30 minutes. It is VERY IMPORTANT to stir the sauce every half hour so that it doesn't burn.

I had some red wine from the Finger Lakes that was a little bit too sweet for our taste, but it's perfect in Grandma's sauce.

(Onions, garlic, tomato paste, and wine)

Fortunately I had some fresh basil on my deck. It really does make a difference.

This makes A LOT of sauce. When I make this I'll divide it in two and freeze half of it; the rest we'll have for several nights of dinners. (Spaghetti...lasagna...eggplant parmesan...meatball/sausage subs...even pizza.)

When the sauce is done, I put the sausage and meatballs in a separate dish for serving.

John and his father ate their spaghetti with a glass of milk. We opted for mojitos instead. (This was Joe's plate. My gluten free pasta of choice for this meal: Mrs. Leeper's corn spaghetti.)

During their brief time together, Savannah meets John's father and visits him several times. Savannah sees something in Mr. Tyree that John has never considered before, and this revelation ultimately helps John to better appreciate and accept his father's awkward quirkiness.

There's also a guy named Tim in this story (maybe we have a little bit of a love triangle?), an autistic boy named Alan, a hotshot named Randy, some horses, and the full moon.

I'll tell you more when I share my recipe for teriyaki grilled chicken!

True Believer: Lexie's Easy Lighthouse Linguine

Lexie needs some time alone. She's recently met Jeremy, a hotshot journalist, and she's found herself falling in love with him. Lexie has been in love before, and she's sure that if she gets involved with Jeremy, she'll end up getting hurt, just like she has before. Besides, Jeremy is going home to New York soon, and if she runs away to her beach house in Hatteras, she won't have to say goodbye to him. (Read more about Jeremy and Lexie here and here.)

Meanwhile Jeremy is perplexed by Lexie's sudden disappearance from Boone Creek. He has found himself in love as well, and is determined to let Lexie know his feelings for her. He knows he is leaving soon, and he doesn't want to return to New York without seeing her one more time. When he tracks her down to her beach house, Lexie decides--after getting over the initial shock of having him suddenly appear on the beach out of nowhere--to cook him pasta with her favorite sauce.

Lexie takes out two big cans of San Marzano tomatoes, a couple of onions, a stick of butter, and a great big pot to cook it all in. She pours the tomatoes into the pot, throws in the butter, and instructs Jeremy to cut the onions in half and add them to the sauce.

As she washed her hands, Jeremy peeked into the saucepan, frowning. "That's it? No garlic? No salt and pepper? No sausage? No meatballs?"

(This is exactly what my own half-Italian husband said when I told him what I'd be cooking. His mother is Italian, and she makes the best sauce ever. Complete with sausage and meatballs.)

She shook her head. "Three ingredients only. Of course, we'll pour it over linguine and top it with some fresh-grated Parmesan cheese."

"That isn't very Italian."

"Actually, it is. It's the way they've made it in San Marzano for hundreds of years. That's in Italy, by the way." (True Believer, p. 225)

Well, I don't know whether or not it's really a centuries-old Italian tradition, but Joe and I were both skeptical. "I'm sure it won't be as good as your mom's," I said, "but I'm making it anyway."

My first task was to find out what San Marzano tomatoes are. At first I thought it was a brand name, but I soon learned that it's a specific type of tomato that's grown in a certain part of Italy, and that you can find them in just about any grocery store. Almost all of the San Marzano tomatoes I was able to find were packed whole in the can, rather than pureed or crushed. I wondered whether or not Lexie's tomatoes were whole, and if they were, shouldn't she at least chop them first? I had almost decided to send Nick a message or a tweet or something, to ask him this very question (...like there would be any chance of getting an answer! Dumb idea). In the end I opted to put the whole tomatoes in the food processor and chop them a little bit before putting them into the pot. (I do this when I make chili, after all--and I'm sure this is because my chili recipe originally came from the owner's manual from my food processor, and of course it's going to tell me to get whole tomatoes and use their machine to chop them up. I'll share that recipe with you here sometime; it's one of our favorites.)

I didn't know how big Lexie's cans of tomatoes were, so I decided to use three. I found out later this was too many--more about that in a minute.

The butter is beginning to melt...

Whoops, I dripped a little tomato sauce on my book!

I mixed a little bit of the sauce with the linguine to give it some color because it's what my Italian mother-in-law does.

Okay. Now to admit my mistake. As I'm working on this blog post, I've decided to do a Google search to find out if this is REALLY how they cook their sauce in San Marzano. Well, I didn't find out the answer, but guess what I found right away? This, from Deb in New York. It's a recipe for sauce, made EXACTLY like Lexie's. As far as I know, Deb didn't get the idea from True Believer or any other Nicholas Sparks book. I realize now that I should have done this BEFORE making the sauce (slaps forehead) because guess what? You DON'T have to put the tomatoes through the food processor; you just put them whole in the pot and they'll break down while they're cooking (although frankly I don't think it matters all that much whether you process them or not). I would also have known (slaps forehead again) to only use TWO cans, not three, because according to Deb's recipe from Smitten Kitchen, for every 28-ounce can, you should use half a stick of butter and one onion. Now I want a do-over; next time I'll know what to do, at least.

Lexie fixes a simple salad of lettuce, tomato, and olives, and whips up a dressing with olive oil, balsamic, salt, and pepper.

A little extra sauce to pour over the pasta...

A little Chianti...

...and some fresh parmesan and basil on top. I had the gluten-free rice fetuccini.

Lexie tells Jeremy the sauce would be done in an hour and a half, and that's about how long I cooked mine. It was good, better than jarred sauce, that's for sure, and it's definitely one to make again because it's so easy. (I made a mental note to make this on a Friday next year during Lent.) Even though Jeremy thinks it's the best he's ever tasted--even better than his Italian mother's--I will say that we still like my Italian mother-in-law's more than this one; although if I'd had the proper tomato-onion-butter ratio I might have a better comparison. Her sauce is a lot more work (even more than the one I made last fall), and worth the effort if you have the time. I know I've been promising to share it with you for months; I haven't forgotten. Soon, I hope.

Maybe when I make a sauce like Deb's, it WILL be better than my mother-in-law's.

Next Up: We'll visit The Rescue one more time with a rain-or-shine summer cookout.