Comforting Comfort food.

The last week has been brutal. Work has been off the chain and I have not had any me time. I decided I needed to have spaghetti, garlic bread and salad for dinner.

For spaghetti sauce -

1 lb of ground meat
2 TBs of oil (if you don't use a non-stick pot)
2 large can fire roasted diced tomatoes
2 TB chopped garlic
sesame oil
reduced sodium soy sauce
6 shakes of bitters - optional
mirin - optional
salt
pepper


Brown the ground meat in a large saucepan. If the pan is non-stick, you will need to heat about 2 TBS of oil in the pan. (When you see the oil swirling or flick a drop of water in it and it sizzles, the pan is hot).

Transfer the browned meat into a medium size pot.

Pour in fire roasted tomatoes.

Add garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce to taste.

I use bitters to punch up the tomato flavor and mirin to add a touch of sweetness.

After the flavor marinate for a about 30 minutes - taste to see if you need any more salt and pepper.

Seasoning spaghetti sauce is a very individualistic thing. This is my basic go to sauce. These are a few variations on my sauce-

spicy sausage - specialty stores have great flavored sausage. One of the best I ever had was soy garlic mesquite.

sliced hot dogs- when my nieces and nephews were younger, I added these for the cool aunt factor.

chiffonade of basil- roll basil leaves and slice thinly perpendicular to the roll. If you do this correctly, it lools like sting segments. If it is not in season, I will use dried.

pesto- I like pesto. You do not need a lot to flavor the sauce.

Chinese five spice - when I want something a little different.

A good sauce needs to sit and get better. I eat a small bowl the day I make it and then let the post of sauce sit overnight. It really does taste better the next day.