My recipe is very different from what Mom used to make. No hard boiled eggs in mine, nor sugar or cinnamon.
The hard boiled eggs were boiled and peeled and added to the sauce just before serving so you could get an egg along with your meatball. Even as a child, I was not fond of this idea.
Mom’s spaghetti was rather bland with a little onion and even less garlic. It was sweet rather than savory. I got my first job, as a teenager, in an Italian restaurant and learned a different flavor palate. I have an ever evolving method for my spaghetti sauce that is subject to change.
Currently:
Longhair75’s Spaghetti Pomodoro:
This will feed 6 or so people with leftovers
Start out doing the prep work . Roast a couple of bell peppers ( I use one red and one yellow) in your broiler. Half the peppers and clear the seeds and stem. Place them on a cookie sheet under your broiler until the skin is burned black (about ten minutes). Put them in a bowl of cold water for five minutes or so and the skins will peel off real easy. Coarsely dice them and set aside. Coarsely dice a large red onion. Finely dice half a head of fresh garlic (five or six cloves) and also finely dice a handful of shallots. Strip the leaves from a good sized handful of fresh basil. Roll them up and slice them very thin. Do the same with a handful of fresh Italian parsley.
For meat, I use four or five Spicy Italian sausages, a couple of pounds of lean ground sirloin and a pound of lean ground pork. I used to use ground veal, but I haven’t been able to find it for a few years. Mix the sirloin and pork with a palm full of the onion, a little of the garlic and some of the shallots. Add some fresh grated Parmesan cheese and roll into meatballs. (I make mine about twice the size of a ping pong ball)
In a large stockpot (eight quarts or so) start with some extra virgin olive oil. When it is hot, add the onions and sauté them until tender. Break up a couple of the meatballs and lightly brown the meat in the olive oil and onion, then add the garlic and shallots and sauté for another couple of minutes being careful not to burn them. Deglaze the pot with a cup or so of red wine. Turn the fire to low and add ten six ounce cans of tomato paste and one can of beef stock and one can of water for each can of tomato paste. Stir in the roasted peppers, basil, parsley and a palm full of fresh oregano. Bring the heat back up to a simmer.
In a large skillet, lightly brown the meatballs. Place them into a baking dish along with the sausages and bake at 350 for about forty minutes. Deglaze the skillet and the baking dish with another cup or so of red wine and add it to the sauce pot.
Simmer this all day, while carefully drinking the rest of the wine, until it has reduced by about a third. I leave a fresh, crusty French baguette on the counter to allow the family to break off a chunk to “check on the sauce” as it simmers. Four or five hours later, cut the sausage into bite sized pieces and add it along with the meatballs. Another hour, and the Spaghetti Pomodoro sauce is ready to serve over pasta with a tossed salad, hot garlic bread and a nice Italian red wine. Refrigerate the leftovers. This sauce is much better the second day.
