Saturday Afternoon

I made the absolute best spaghetti sauce last night with those GreenWise chicken sausages. The sausages were actually bit players. The secret's in the sauce (as they say), which was intense. We had it for lunch today. B. loved it, and he's not really a big fan of spaghetti and meat sauce.

The basic sauce itself consisted of a large container of Ragu meat sauce; two large cans of regular tomato sauce; a can of tomato paste; 1 1/3 lbs. ground sirloin; a large onion, a green pepper and approximately four cloves of garlic (chopped coarsely in the food processor)--to which I added a tablespoon of dried rosemary (ground up in a mortar), a tablespoon of dried oregano, and a tablespoon of fennel seeds (also ground up in the mortar, or at least smashed to bits), along with two bay leaves, about a tablespoon of salt, freshly ground black pepper, about 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper, a few sprigs of fresh thyme (although you could use dried), and a generous amount (approximately 1/4 cup) of freshly grated Locatelli Pecorino Romano cheese. After all that was bubbling in the pot, I added the sausages (10 of them), which I'd first browned in olive oil. (Actually the sauce began in the olive oil after the sausages had been removed and set aside.) I simmered the sauce for about 2 hours, stirring often.

I served it over Barilla angel hair pasta (2 lbs. for the price of one at Publix).