Last Wednesday I woke up thinking it was Thursday, had lunch, and was nursing a Marlboro when I had a sudden craving to have spaghetti for dinner.
Perfect, I thought. Two birds with one stone. I was in no mood to cook anything, Italian night or not. Anything but spaghetti, that was.
I heated up a half-cup of olive oil in a skillet and tossed in a kilo of ground beef. The cook I set to work on the garlic (minced, 1 cup), onion (diced, 3 cups), and carrots (grated, 3 cups). Some celery would have been nice, but we were out.
Ma was on the phone with a cousin — mine, not hers. She motioned me over, handed me the receiver. “Do you know how to make spaghetti sauce turn that deep, dark red?” the cousin asked.
No shit, I thought. That’s what I’m doing right now. It’s simple, too: Once in the pan, pat the ground beef down and let sit, never mind if the meat up top is still raw; resist the urge to stir like crazy. Wait a minute or two after the oil sizzles back up before stirring so that the meat at the bottom gets to brown. Repeat the drill until everything is uniformly browned. Just remember to turn the heat down a notch or two so the meat doesn’t burn instead. That’s what gives the sauce that dark meaty color. Remove from pan and set aside.
Like I said, I wasn’t in the mood. I conveniently forgot to tell the clueless cousin to add two heaping tablespoons of brown sugar to help the browning along. Or of the heaping tablespoon of smoked paprika. Some things you learn the hard way. That, or when I’m in a much better frame of mind.
Assured that the dish would look nothing like the fire-engine-red Jolly spaghetti, I heated up the skillet anew and into it went a cup of olive oil. I didn’t wait for the oil to reach smoking point, knowing that olive oil spatters like crazy. Not in the mood for that, either. First, the garlic, followed shortly by the onions. After the onions turned translucent, the carrots. I stirred and stirred until the whole thing became a mush, then added the browned beef and stirred some more.
At some point during all that, I made a quick trip to the pantry and came back with 2 large cans of diced tomatoes and 2 kilos of instant spaghetti sauce, Italian-style. Into a Dutch oven all of that went, and it was simmering by the time I was done with the meat and vegetable mixture — that went into the pot, too.
My work was done (for the meantime). Manang, the cook, took over the mindless task of stirring the sauce as it simmered over low heat for the next 3 hours. The only instructions were: 1) keep stirring, and 2) get a high chair, lest the varicose veins act up (no kidding: Manang had those).
Three hours later I went back into the kitchen for the finishing touches: a teaspoon of cayenne, a teaspoon of dried oregano, salt to taste, plus a chiffonade of basil and grated Parmesan cheese to serve on the side. I was barely past the door when I saw Manang glance my way and chuckle. Something was afoot.
“Someone thinks it’s Thursday,” my sister said without looking up from the book she was reading. Manang broke into a guffaw.
“That’s because it is Thursday.” Wasn’t it?
“Someone needs to check the calendar then.”
I did. It wasn’t.
Uh-kay…
Dinner was great, though. The sauce went well with angel-hair pasta and was sopped clean off the plate with garlic bread. Everyone sat back, sighed in contentment, and complimented me on the wonderful meal.
Well, not everyone, exactly. My sister’s vegetarian. She had tofu or some such shit.
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