Italian-American Meat Sauce

Name: Italian-American Meat Sauce
Yield: makes about 8 cups, enough to ¿ll and sauce Italian-American Lasagna (page 156)
Ingredients: Two 35-ounce cans Italian plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano); 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil; 2 medium yellow onions, diced (about 2 cups); 6 to 8 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped fine; 5 to 6 meaty pork neck bones (about 3/4 pound); 1 pound ground beef; 1 pound ground pork; Salt; 4 bay leaves; 1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano, preferably the Sicilian or Greek type dried on the branch, crumbled; 3/4 cup dry white wine; 1/3 cup tomato paste; 3 to 4 cups hot water

December 9, 2011

If you have trouble finding ground pork, or if you prefer to grind your own, it’s really very easy. (And if you buy a piece of bone-in pork to grind, you’ll have the bones you need for the sauce.) Remove all bones and gristle from the meat, but leave some of the fat. Cut the pork into 1-inch pieces, and chill them thoroughly. Grind about half at a time in a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Pulse, using quick on/off motions, until the meat is ground coarsely. In my region of Italy, tomato paste is usually added along with the onions to caramelize a little bit. But around Naples, and the rest of southern Italy, tomato paste is stirred right into the sauce. That’s how I do it here. When the sauce is finished simmering, you can pull the meat from the bones and stir it into the sauce, or you can do what I do—nibble on it while the sauce perks away. This makes quite a bit of sauce—enough to feed a small crowd and have enough left over to freeze in small quantities for a quick pasta meal for one or two.

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