askpixie.
04.16.05
For when you have another ask pixie:
My mom has forgotten her spaghetti sauce. My experiments have
been
mostly okay, except the watery mess one.
What's your favorite sauce?
Thanks!
-- J
Hey J!
In my youth, my mom was a hell of a maker of spaghetti sauce. But then, she married someone with simple tastes, and became responsible for feeding children that didn't care for spiciness. Consequently, her spaghetti sauce, while still tasty, lacks the zing it used to have. And no, I am not romanticizing the spaghetti sauce of my youth. It was just pretty fucking good sauce.
Plus, she doesn't make lasagna from scratch anymore, instead choosing to purchase it prefab and frozen at Sam's Club. But that's neither here not there.
Oh, and her chili.
*sigh*
I miss her pre-1992 chili. I mean, I make pretty good chili, but it will never compare to her old-school chili of yore.
Ahem.
And now back to spaghetti sauce.
Honestly, I'm fairly tight with my grocery money. I just generally buy what's cheapest, or on sale.
Years ago, when I was ultra-poor, I bought a big-ass can of Hunt's Spaghetti Sauce Traditional for like 99¢, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was very tasty. It needed a little bit of souping up, so I tweaked it a little with the help of the spice cabinet, but otherwise it was good. So I bought more, and used it for everything from lasagna to milanesa a'la napolitana, with great success.
Later, when I had more money to spend, I bought lots of other sauces, and wasn't that impressed. Sure, they tasted okay, but I wasn't getting any bang for the buck. If I'm going to buy a $5 bottle of sauce, it better be five times better than the cheap stuff. Or at least two times as tasty.
So, I went back to my standby, the big-ass can of Hunt's. There are a lot more delicious varieties other than Traditional, like Garlic and Herb, Four Cheese, or even Italian Sausage -- there are like 10 varieties.
Today, if I'm going to actually make spaghetti, I generally spice it up, maybe add a teensy bit of water or chicken stock to thin it slightly, add in things like onions, peppers, garlic and mushrooms, and let it simmer for a little bit to thicken back up.
If I'm going to make lasagna or stuffed shells, I generally leave it as is, and use one of the more flavored varieties. The Hunt's website has 18 recipes using the sauces, none of which I have tried but are also probably pretty good.
And if the thought of canned sauce makes you gack, you might the recipe in the Martha Stewart Cookbook. I haven't made the spaghetti sauce, but I have made the pizza sauce according to recipe a couple of times, and it is as good as anything I can imagine. I can only extrapolate that the spaghetti sauce would also be good.
I hope that helped, even if only a little bit.
Buona fortuna! Buon Appetito!
-- pixie
As an addendum, several months later, I have now decided that Trader Joe's Vodka Marinara is currently my favorite spaghetti sauce. That over some cheese ravioli, or some artichoke tortellini? Mmm, mmm. Good eating.
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