Spaghetti Sauce
This originated vaguely 100 years ago in Stamford, Connecticut by way of Calabria, Italy.
What you’ll need:
About 1/2 cup of olive oil
1 large red onion
Several (5?) cloves of garlic
About 24 oz of mushrooms
2 28 oz cans of Tomato Purée (any brand)
2 12 oz cans of Tomato Paste (plain Contadina brand is best)
3 tbsp Oregano
1 tsp paprika
2 tbsp parsley
1 tbsp basil
Put the olive oil into a 6 qt pot. Dice the onion and put that in the pot. Use a garlic press to crush the garlic into the pot. Cook those together on the stove over medium high heat, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes. Cut up the mushrooms in a food processor until they are medium fine and add those to the pot, stirring continuously. Cook everything together for another 5 to 10 minutes or so.
Turn down the heat to the lowest setting. Add the purée and paste. Stir in the spices. Let it simmer on the lowest heat setting for a good couple of hours, stirring frequently to prevent the sauce from burning onto the bottom of the pot.
This is a vegan spaghetti sauce. I used to make it with ground beef instead of mushroom, but substituted in the mushroom when my daughter went vegetarian. My mom claimed that this was how her mother made sauce, though all of her four sisters made the same claim, and their sauces were each very different from my mom’s and from each other’s.
The onion should be cooked to the point where it pretty much dissolves into the sauce. The paprika should be felt rather than tasted. The oregano is the dominant spice. You can serve with Beyond Beef meatballs and still keep the whole thing vegan.