First recipe -- spaghetti sauce with meatballs

Be sure and read the first BLOG in this series (see below).

I am starting the recipe BLOG with my mother's recipe for spaghetti. I loved her spaghetti sauce and I know at least my son thinks it's the best. Personally, the best spaghetti sauce (gravy) I have ever tasted did not come from my mother, but from my Aunt Rita. I have tried to duplicate Aunt Rita's recipe, but have never succeeded. So, I'll stick with my mom's. Another note: my mom's sister Anne also made a great spaghetti, but it was different from my mom's. My cousin Micki, however, gave us spaghetti when we visited her last year, and her spaghetti tasted just like my mother's. She was one of Aunt Daisy's daughters, but she probably learned to cook spaghetti from our grandmother because she spent much of her early life with her.

Original recipe: This recipe was modified by my mother after Ragu was introduced to the world in the early 60s. After that she used Ragu and doctored it up with her special spices.

Note: My mother used fresh basil for most of the year. Just before the first frost she would pick whatever was left on her basil plants and dry the basil and use that for the rest of the winter, then in the spring when the basil came back or she planted new plants, she used the fresh basil. I prefer her recipe with fresh basil, but dried basil is okay to use.

The meatballs:

1 pound ground round
1/2 pound ground pork (not necessary, but changes the flavor of the sauce -- you can use a small pork chop and cut it into very small pieces and cook those pieces when you brown the meatballs)
1/2 cup bread crumbs (my mother saved the heels from loaves of Italian bread and then she or I would crush those hard heels with the rolling pin)
1 tspn garlic powder
1 tspn salt
1/2 tspn ground pepper (fresh if you have it)
1 egg

Mix all ingredients (I use my clean hands). Shape into balls that are about the size of a key lime. That's larger than a jaw breaker, but smaller than a golf ball.

In a large frying pan (my mom used a cast iron pan, I use a stainless steel pan) heat 2 tblspns of olive oil until a drop of water sizzles when dropped in it. Put each meatball in the hot oil, leaving space to turn them over. Brown on all sides -- do not burn. After the meatballs are browned lower heat to the "low" setting (or #1 if you have a flattop stove) and add the following ingredients

2 cloves of garlic -- thinly sliced -- add to the meatball oil and cook for about one minute. The garlic will cook quickly while the pot cools down. Now, add on top of the meatballs and garlic:

1 large can of tomato puree
1 small can of tomato paste. Add two cans of water using the paste can.
1 tblspn basil
1/2 tspn oregano (I don't use this because Aunt Rita said never to use oregano, but my mother did)
salt to taste

Mom cooked her sauce for about three to four hours, stirring only with a wooden spoon, tasting, letting me taste until we had it perfected.

She always had a large bowl of freshly grated Parmesan cheese on the table for those who wanted cheese. She also started cooking only rigatoni because it was less messy for the little children to handle than stringy spaghetti. I prefer spaghetti, or spaghettini (which takes a lot more sauce) to rigatoni, but when my own children were small, I only used the rigatoni for the same reason my mother did -- it was easier to clean up the children after they had the rigatoni than it was after they slurped up the spaghetti (no matter how small I cut it).

ENJOY!

ttfn