Italian Red Meat Sauce For Beginners

This morning I made Italian Red Meat Sauce for the lasagna that I'm taking to a dinner party this evening. It's 8:15 AM now and it's starting its day long simmer. Be prepared to end up with a huge pot of sauce if you follow this recipe. I'll be having a lot left over today to freeze in quart-sized bags.

I'll list the ingredients for the seasoned cooks and you'll know what to do with them. For the beginning cooks, I'll go into painful detail that would drive a seasoned cook up the wall.

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First, pretend you're filming a cooking show so you can chatter and gesture and sneer and mmm and ahhhh and laugh out loud. But first... if you don't have a wooden chopping bowl and chopping blade, get one right now - the sauce can wait. You can do each of the vegetables in it and you can chop all of the fresh herbs in it at the same time without making a huge mess. And it's a lot more fun than a chopping board.

Now that you have your chopping bowl...

Ingredients:

One dozen sundried tomatoes - soaked beforehand for two days in the refridgerator - save water
Virgin olive oil - or evoo if you can stand the taste, I can't - blech
One sweet onion
One head of garlic
Large package of ground beef - sorry, I threw out the package before I looked at the weight
Large package of hot Italian sausage - same thing with the weight
Two large zucchini
One large carrot
One eggplant
One dozen crimini mushrooms
One can of green beans - save juice
One can of cannelini beans - save juice
One large bottle of roasted red peppers - save juice
One third of a grocery store sized bunch of Italian parsley - use the leaf end - or dried if you don't have fresh
A couple stalks of fresh marjoram - or dried if you don't have fresh
Five or six stalks of fresh curley parsley - or dried if you don't have fresh
Five or six stalks of fresh basil - or dried if you don't have fresh
A couple small stalks of fresh oregano - or powdered if you don't have fresh
A few sprigs - not stalks - of rosemary
You really should use fresh herbs - hunt all over if you have to, you'll find them all eventually
Ground allspice - not fresh
One large can of tomato puree
One large can of diced tomatoes
One large can of tomato paste
Dry red wine
Fresh lemon juice
Sugar
Salt

Simmer the sundried tomatoes and water in a saucepan - for about twenty minutes, and let cool
But first... lay out all of your fresh ingredients in a pile because the camera loves them
Heat olive oil on low in your biggest pot - I mean big
Chop onion and add to pot - they should hiss, otherwise turn up heat a little until they do
Crush and de-paper the head of garlic, chop finely and add to pot
Raise heat to medium and cook onions and garlic, stirring often with a wooden untesil - easier on the pot than a metal one - until the onions are translucent
Add the ground beef and the Italian sausage to the pot and break up the meat as you stir
If the Italian sausage comes in casings, squeeze the meat out first
Stay on top of this, allowing the meat to brown and stick, then add just enough water to scrape the brown gunk off the bottom of the pot and let the water boil off
Turn meat so a new bunch browns in the same way
Repeat whole process - as many times as you can stand, but not until the meat dries out - remember to keep adding just a little bit of water to the brown gunk - it adds flavor to the sauce, like bouillon would
When you get bored with doing this, turn the heat to low
Chop the zucchini - not too fine - you want your eaters to get a little mouthful of recognizable vegetable now and then - add to pot and stir in
Grate the carrot into the pot and stir in
Chop the eggplant just like the zucchini - including skin - add to pot and stir in
Chop the mushrooms, including stems - add to pot and stir in - I use the stems too because crimini mushrooms aren't cheap
Chop the green beans a little bit and add to pot with juice in can and stir in
Add the cannelini beans with juice in can to pot and stir in
Add the juice from the red peppers to pot and stir in
Chop the red peppers, add to pot and stir in
Add the water from the sundried tomatoes to pot and stir in
Chop the sundried tomatoes pretty fine, add to pot and stir in
Let the pot simmer for a while on low heat, stirring occasionally while you:
Chop together the Italian parsley including stems, curly parsley including stems, oregano - leaves only, marjoram - leaves only, basil - leaves only, rosemary - leaves only, and add to pot and stir in - more to taste as sauce cooks
Or add one and a half teaspoons of dried basil, one teaspoon of powdered oregano, one and a half teaspoons dried marjoram, two tablespoons each of dried Italian parsley and dried curly parsley, and one half teaspoon of rosemary - to pot and stir - more to taste as sauce cooks
Add one half teaspoon ground allspice to pot and stir
Let this simmer some more for a while, stirring occasionally to let the vegetables and herbs release their juices and oils and flavor and all that
Add all the canned tomato stuff to pot and stir in
Add two empty tomato paste cans worth of dry red wine to pot and stir, more to taste as sauce cooks
Simmer uncovered forevah - hours and hours, stirring about every half hour, until it's the thickness you want - it will make a big mess of your stove but your whole house will smell incredible
At the very end, tweak with lemon juice and/or sugar and/or salt if you think it needs any of these
You can use the sauce on pasta or in lasagna
Freezes well