I made a meat sauce the other night. Our kids were coming to dinner and Jill gave me a night off from Vegan cooking. She said, “Make a pasta for the kids and I’ll figure something out for myself. Don’t worry.” This immediately made me start to worry and I decided to roast some vegetables, as well.
The meat sauce could be called “Mike’s Sauce”. It’s not in any way Italian. It dates back to when we shared a beach house with three other couples – back when we were in our twenties. This is the sauce that fed the multitudes. It’s cheap and good. This time I served it with a pound of penne.
The new twist – you have to have a new twist, no? – is that I make a sauté of fresh hot peppers to serve on the side for anyone who likes it spicy. The thing about using fresh peppers is that they not only have heat; they have that wonderful, deep, sweet, fresh-pepper taste.
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MIKE’S SAUCE
Olive oil – 4 tbsps
Garlic – 3 cloves
Onion – 1 medium yellow
Fennel – 1 bulb
Carrots – 2 medium
Celery – 2 stalks
Ground beef – 1 ½ pounds (you can mix beef and veal)
Italian sweet sausages – 5
White wine – 1 ½ cups
San Marzano Tomatoes – 1 28 0z. can pour them into a bowl and
break them up with your hands)
Fresh, hot peppers (recipe to follow)
sautéed in oil
1. Chop all the veg into a medium dice; thinly slice the garlic
2. Boil the sausages in water until about half-done; then slice them thinly;
3. In a big pan, sauté the veg over medium heat until translucent;
4. Add the garlic and cook another minute or so;
5. Add the ground meat and brown;
6. When the meat is done, tip the pan and pour off any excess fat;
7. Add the wine; turn up the heat to high and bubble it away, stirring occasionally;
8. Add the tomatoes, salt generously and stir;
9. Add the sliced sausages
10. Bring to a slow simmer and cook for forty minutes to an hour,
stirring; add a little water, if necessary.
FRESH HOT PEPPERS
cast of characters
Shop for a nice variety of hot peppers. I like the long Italian hot peppers we’re seeing locally now; then some jalapeno, cayenne, anaheim, chipotle, habanera (these are unbelievably hot – be careful). Anyway, make your own mix; slice them up and gently sauté in a nice amount of olive oil.
Use latex or surgical gloves when you clean and chop the peppers; also set aside a separate cutting board.
If you don’t use gloves, make sure not to touch your wife in an intimate manner for at least a week.
Store the peppers with all the oil in a tightly closed container. Serve on the side of almost anything. I made some roasted potatoes and onions the other night – the potatoes cut into nice chunks, tossed in olive oil and salt and roasted in a fairly hot oven. Then I peeled a few dozen pearl onions and threw them in and shook the whole thing up. Anyway, the hot peppers on the side went beautifully with this dish.
Mike, wonderful! Your medley of peppers will go with almost anything, almost any meal. Eggs for breakfast, leftover pizza for lunch (spread on top, heat a little), on almost any meat for dinner, or tossed with any pasta. Most people like a little pizzazz with their meal. Your medley is right on! Rubber gloves are good, but not necessary. Just don’t touch yourself or your partner anywhere until you’ve washed your hands thoroughly. Especially don’t touch your eyes or genetalia! We eat Big Jims or Anaheim with almost everything/every meal here in the Land of Enchantment! Enjoy!!! Mike, keep it coming.
I love chili peppers. I grow them. But you can’t tell, just by looking at a chili, how hot it is, even though 100 years ago a man named Wilbur Scoville came up with the SHU (Scoville Heat Unit), a way to measure capsaicin – the ingredient in chili that gives it the ‘hotness’. The scale ranges from zero to 16 million. Jalepeno comes in at about 3,500, as does McIlhenny’s Original Tabasco Sauce. A habanero can run up to a few hundred thousand. The hottest pepper in the world is Naga Jolokia from northern India – a million SHU. Anything more than that is considered ammunition. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a kind of thermometer that you could take to Fairway and just stick it inside a pepper and get a reading – and as they say, if the SHU fits … buy it and stick it in your sauce – again, without touching your gen-italia. Buon Appetito, Mikey.
How about giving us some good information about Italian cheeses, preferably some with truffles!
Thanks,
Gail Walter
Mikey,
Great minds…or something like that. Maybe it’s the weather.
Two weeks ago David got a couple of beautiful dark green poblano peppers, whose virtue is that they have just enough fire to make them interesting, but not enough to make you gasp for a glass of milk.
He made sauteed onions and peppers as a side dish for steak. Perfect! The poblanos add a neat dimension to an old favorite. Quick and easy, too, and one pepper was enough to go with a sliced large onion.
Next time, I’ve suggested that first we roast the pepper briefly on the gas flame, to give a smokey dimension. What do you think?
@ Susan — smoky? Sure, that sounds great. The peppers add so much flavor.
@ Gail — my favorite is pecorino from Umbria with black truffles from right next door. We’ll be there in less than a week.
@ Shuggie — From the forst three letters of your name, you must have a high Scoville.
@ Walt — Big Jims are new to me. They sound great.
Vegan night off? The peppers sound like the perfect complement to any vegan meal!
Got a whiff of you two via our ambassadresses, Lindy and Fay. Checked into Alison’s blog too. All yum factors…
To seed or not deseed? Any preference for this? I assume not, since not mentioned. And also, since I wear contact, I’ve taken to using rubber gloves – latex or the thin ones just didn’t keep the heat off my finger tips. Yikes!! Happy travels and sending lotsa love across the miles….
@ Genie — I don’t know – with rubber gloves, I just don’t get the same sensitivity.