Americana Sauce
INGREDIENTS
* 2 onions, 12 cloves of garlic, 2 carrots, 3 celery ribs, 400g tin chopped tomatoes, ½ bunch fresh thyme, ½ bunch fresh oregano.
* 250g free-range beef mince, 250g free-range pork mince, 250g Italian sausage meat, good olive oil,
* Salt, pepper, 2 tsp season-all, 1 tbsp dried oregano, 1 tbsp dry mixed herbs, 1 tsp MSG, ½ tsp ground chipotle
* ½ cup red wine, 4 tbsp tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce.
First, do all of your cutting and prep. Peel the onions and garlic. Chop the onions into small dice and finely chop the garlic. Peel the carrots and chop both the carrots and celery into small dice. Core and chop the tomatoes into small pieces. Put onion, garlic, carrot, and celery aside in one bowl. Strip the thyme leaves from the sprigs, discard the stalks, and put the leaves aside in one bowl. Strip the oregano leaves from the stalks, discard the stalks, and put them aside with the thyme.
Mix the beef mince and the pork mince roughly in a large bowl. Add the sausage meat; if the sausage meat is in casings, cut the casings open, remove the meat from the casing, and discard the casings. Put the meat aside.
Mix a couple of teaspoons of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, the season-all, the dried oregano, the dry mixed herbs, the MSG, and the chipotle in a small bowl, and put the bowl aside.
Fry the meat in a heavy pan with a little oil, breaking it up and mixing it with a wooden spoon or bamboo spatula as it fries, until it looks well mixed and well browned. Add the bowl of dry seasonings, mix them in well, and fry the lot together for another fifteen minutes.
Add the onions, garlic, carrots, and celery to the same pan with a little more oil, and fry everything together, until the onion is transparent. Add the tomato paste, the wine, a dash or two of Worcestershire, and a few dashes of Tabasco and simmer the lot for another hour. Adjust the seasonings; it may need more salt, pepper, tomato paste, herbs, or anything else you like.
Send it to the table, with boiled spaghetti or boiled tagliatelle, and a bowl of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.
