Cooking in KC: Mama Mia

Sometimes I like to think of myself as an honorary Italian. In my daydreams, a court of little, old Italian grandmothers knight me with a big wooden spoon and tell me how perfect and delicious my homemade meatballs are.

That’s not weird, right?

Anyway, I mentioned a homemade red sauce in a previous post, so here we go! I made this sauce for a party recently and froze bags of it afterwards. I usually freeze 2 cups per bag, which is about 2 meals worth of sauce. One bag was used with pizza and pork parmesan sandwiches (the second recipe in this post). I like the ziplock bag freezing method because to thaw it I just sit the bag in a bowl of warm water.

Just don't put your bags in the freezer on a wire rack, or the bag might freeze around the shape of the rack. Like this.

Here are the estimated proportions, but overall, it’s taste as you go (i.e. whip out the garlic powder if you need to).

Homemade Red Sauce

Ingredients:

42 oz. (one big can + one little can) canned tomatoes, diced or crushed (see note below)

5 heads of garlic, roasted (follow the instructions at the start of this recipe)

1 medium onion, diced

1 carrot, diced

¼ to ½ cup EVOO (tip: use the EVOO left from the roasted garlic method above)

Herbs and spices

Salt and pepper

Tomato Note: Diced tomatoes are chunkier and will make your sauce look like chili. However, if you have an immersion blender, it doesn’t matter. I take an immersion blender through my sauce to make it smooth and to be sure the olive oil blends well. If you’re not going to blend your sauce, I’d use crushed tomatoes.

1. Start with plenty of olive oil in your pot on med-high heat. Add onions and cook until translucent (about 10 minutes). Use whatever you have; I usually have diced onion remnants in my freezer—red, white, yellow onion, or a combination, I’m not picky.

2. If you choose to use minced or chopped garlic, you should add that now. I love roasted garlic, so I’m adding that later. Also you won’t need as much garlic if you’re NOT roasting it. If you are roasting it, load up.

3. Next add diced carrots (which apparently add a slight sweetness). You don’t need much. This is another food remnant easily found in my freezer.

4. Then add your tomatoes and simmer the heck out of everything.

Now is when I add roasted garlic. I run the roasted garlic through a food processor to make it pasty before adding it to the sauce. My favorite new way to roast garlic is at the beginning of this recipe. You don’t have to squeeze the garlic out of its skin at the end, and you end up with infused olive oil you can reuse.

Before . . .

After . . . golden-brown roasted garlic.

You’ll also want to add things like crushed red pepper flakes, a little grated Parmesan cheese (no shame in the green bottle), salt, pepper, basil, oregano, and thyme. You might even try adding a little sugar to balance to acidity in the tomatoes.

Now for the sandwiches!

Pork Parmesan Sandwiches

Ingredients

pork (or chicken or whatever)

loaf of Italian bread

ricotta cheese

zucchini

homemade red sauce

EVOO

egg

flour

bread crumbs

herbs and spices

salt and pepper

1. Start with a pan over med-high heat with a thin layer of EVOO in it. Tenderize (i.e. pound and hammer) the meat so that it’s fairly thin, and season with salt and pepper. Make yourself a little assembly line of bowls in which you dredge the meat in flour, dip in egg wash, and roll in breadcrumbs (which you can dress up with the same grated parm, herbs, and spices you threw in your sauce). The meat will cook quickly, a few minutes on each side.

2. Grill or roast some zucchini. You know how to do this. Toss in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roast at 450° for about 8-10 minutes.

3. Heat up your homemade red sauce.

4. Get out some ricotta cheese. Yeah, mine’s homemade. Not sure how worth it that was, but it was yummy.

That one time I made ricotta cheese. . .

5. Slice a loaf of Italian bread so that you can make two sandwiches. Tip: tear out some of the middle of the loaf to make room for fillings. No creative use for the bread scraps here, just gave them to my spoiled dogs.