The Only Red Sauce Recipe You'll Ever Need!

This is my go to red sauce. Here in South Philly we tend to call it "gravy". It is somewhat adapted from the Simple Tomato Sauce recipe in "Lidia's Family Table" by Lidia Bastianich - one of my favorite cooks and cookbook authors. I think I have almost all of her cookbooks. I enjoy the ways in which Lidia melds the Italian traditions with American cooking. When I want traditional I go to old Marcella Hazan books.

Basic Red Sauce

Ingredients:

8 cups (2 - 35 oz cans) Italian plum tomatoes with their juices. We used the end of our own canned tomatoes for this latest batch. If canned do try to get real San Marzano.

1 large onion, rough chopped

1 medium carrot, rough chopped

1 rib of celery, rough chopped

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon salt (kosher) plus more to taste

2 cups water

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Technique:

Put the tomatoes through a food mill using the medium blade (see picture) or push the tomatoes through a colander or sieve set over a bowl. This is an important step. It gives your sauce a lovely lux consistency.
Put the onion, carrot and celery in a food processor and pulse - you want everything finely and uniformly chopped.
Pour the olive oil in a big heavy bottomed pot. Stir in the chopped vegetables and set over medium high heat. Sprinkle with the salt. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring frequently, bring the veg to a sizzle but don't let them brown. I set a timer for 3 minutes.
Pour the milled tomatoes and juices into the pan and stir with the vegetables. Use the 2 cups of water to swirl any tomato residue from the bowl and the empty tomato cans. Pour the water into the pot.
Stir in the bay leaves and the red pepper flakes, turn up the heat, cover the pot and and bring the sauce to a boil, stir frequently.
When you get the sauce boiling, adjust the heat to an active simmer - you want small bubbles all over the top of the sauce. If you have a "simmer" burner on your stove top this is the time to use it. Cover the pot and cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
After 45 minutes, remove the cover, raise the heat so that the sauce is still bubbling well and gradually reducing.
Cook for another hour or so, stir frequently to avoid any sticking to the bottom of the pot.
As the sauce thickens, turn down the heat.
Taste for salt near the end of the cooking process.
When the sauce is reduced by about a quarter and is well concentrated but still pourable, turn off the heat.
Let the sauce cool. Remove the bay leaves. Let the sauce sit for an hour or two to allow the flavors to mellow.
This sauces freezes very well. If you follow the steps you will always have a great sauce and once you do it a couple of times, it really is easy.

My Meatballs

Another simple recipe, yields great meatballs.

Combine 1 pound of ground meat and the meat (remove it from casing) of 1 pound of hot Italian sausage.

Add two beaten eggs, a teaspoon of garlic powder, a teaspoon or more of dried oregano, a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and a quarter cup of panko crumbs and mix - By hand is really the easiest. Roll into whatever size meatballs you like.

Bake on a parchment lined baking sheet at 425 for about 30 - 35 minutes. Until they are browned. They will not be completely done. Finish the meatballs in the sauce.

Enjoy!

The Urban Garden Adventure on Hold

Well fellow growers, the weather sure isn't making us feel very Spring like is it? For some in our area there's been that regularly occurring "coating to an inch" of snow. And it's cold! And gray and windy.

For me, this is made even more frustrating by the fact that all of this week, I've been floored by a bad, bad cold (not flu, I don't get the flu!). I've been working on an awful cough, on and off fever, no energy and sleepless nights. The full array.

During this wretched time, orders for the garden keep arriving at our home! The potato sets came two days ago, right after the new potato sacks arrived (see picture below). My early crop seeds have all arrived, and some of my seedlings, as well. I did manage to get some early plants in the cold frame before this thing hit me. Of course I haven't seen them in a couple of days.

You know how it is. I have a lot to do out there - removing the Christmas tree branches blanketing a lot of the planting areas, prepping the soil, getting some of the mulch from our composter around, cleaning out the packed shed, cleaning and oiling the garden tools, ...... you get the picture. The list of those first stage jobs that we all do that make us so happy because we know what will be coming.

I found myself today laying on the sofa with a handful of seed packets - I swear I scared myself - I think I was about to alphabetize them!

What are others of you doing, fellow growers? What are your first phase activities?

Please - feel free to share. I'm losing it here!

A Delicious and Crunchy Salad - No Lettuce Anywhere!

We decided to play around a bit with the classic Celery & Green Olive salad - basically a very old Italian recipe in the Cucina Provera ("poor cooking") mode.

Happily, we found that we had much in our produce drawers that "needed to be used". There were gorgeous purple and reddish carrots, a watermelon radish, celery, Cerignola olives, parsley and mixed sprouts - our neighbors had a windfall of sprouts this past week and shared. Everything we found got sliced, pitted, and chopped and went into the bowl.

With a little creativity in the way you slice everything, you can create a truly beautiful salad. Remember - we eat with our eyes too. The artful slicing you see is all the work of my much better half, by the way.

We dressed the salad with a basic vinigarette (made with champagne vinegar) to which we added pinches of dried oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and pepper flakes.

I highly recommend letting the salad sit for a bit. And the next day? Wow - you have an amazing salad again or you could chop it down some more and have a glorious relish to nap over fish or a piece of meat or even onto toasted bread for a bruschetta appetizer.

Enjoy.

An Urban Garden Adventure Begins

Not to wax too philosophical about it, but I feel like I have been planning and learning and working through failures and successes for a number of past growing seasons just to get to THIS year of growing. This will be the year I get serious - and will have serious expectations - about having a successful tiny urban farm.

It's the year I will plant and tend more edible crops than ever before. We are also hoping to have a bit more in the way of color and cutting flowers. We have made some investments in the garden over the winter which will allow this to happen and for that I am very grateful.

I have a great deal of seeds and seedlings on order and am gradually building up my supply of bags of soil, plant tags, and hose attachments - among other things. I am watching closely as some perennial plantings begin to peek out from the soil. For example I have a nice start of Garlic Chives already (see photo). Our ancient Sage plant is budding a bit, as well.

Over the coming weeks I will be writing about what we are growing here at Il Moya, about getting the crops in and my experiences, successes and non-successes. I will also be sharing recipes and techniques for using the bounty of the season.

As you know, we have been learning and planning and making changes in the way we live for some time now. Self sufficiency, re-use, rescue and recycle and a smaller carbon footprint are all goals we strive for everyday.

I hope at the end of this growing season to be able to say that we were pretty successful and that the garden produced a lot for us to eat, to share, to can, to dry and to freeze.

This will be an adventure; one of joy and hard work and a lot of fun.

Stay tuned and stay in touch.

A Repost: Breakfast Cous Cous & Folk Magazine

I wanted to tell you all about a great new magazine, called Folk, that I think many of you would really, really enjoy. If you are interested in urban homesteading, gardening and growing some of your own food, becoming more self sufficient, and a wide array of other skills and issues, this is the publication for you. It is also just plain beautiful. See below for further information.


By the way, March is National Nutrition Month.



Recipe: Breakfast Cous Cous (originated by Vincent of the Jazz Quarters)

Here's a technique for a new breakfast dish we learned from the Innkeepers at the Jazz Quarters on our trip to New Orleans a few weeks ago. You can definitely get creative with the add - ins and it holds well in the 'fridge (I store it in large Bell jars). It also is probably healthier than a lot of the things most of us grab in the AM.

Take a cup of cous cous (we like the Israeli type but any kind will work) and sauté it in 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter for about 2 minutes. Give it a bit of a toast.
Remove cous cous from the pan and wipe the pan out.

Get your add - ins together. The original uses handfuls each of dried cranberries, raisins, chopped walnuts, and slivered almonds. Set these aside.
Get your spices together: 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and salt.

Boil one and one half cups of orange juice.

Off heat, add the cous cous to the hot orange juice. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes.

Toss the slivered almonds into the dry pan for a few minutes; stay with them to avoid burning. Let the almonds cool a bit.

Uncover the cous cous - it should have absorbed all of the orange juice - and stir in the seasonings and then the fruits and nuts.

Let the mixture cool before storing it in the refrigerator.

To serve, let each serving come to room temperature. Enjoy accompanied by a dollop of vanilla yogurt and a drizzle of honey - or whatever else you'd like. It's delicious as is too.

Happy Daylight Savings Time! It could not have come fast enough for me.

Testing The Philly Foodist

Hi everyone

Please excuse the intrusion but I am testing the blogger software.

For some reason following an "update" the blog stopped publishing.

We are trying. Thanks

A Few Good Things That I'm Loving

Some things I thought were worthy of passing along.

I wanted to tell you all about a great new magazine, called Folk, that I think many of you would really, really enjoy. If you are interested in urban homesteading, gardening and growing some of your own food, becoming more self sufficient, and a wide array of other skills and issues, this is the publication for you. It is also just plain beautiful. See below for further information.

By the way, March is National Nutrition Month.

There are still a few tickets for the annual Brewers Plate. It's tomorrow at the Constitution Center from 6:00 - 9:00. Lots and lots of chefs, makers, and purveyors offering amazing food - matched with some of the best brews ever! How can you go wrong? Benefits Fair Foods so you can't go wrong. See you there? For further information go to:
http://bpfair-food.ticketleap.com/the-brewers-plate/details



Recipe: Breakfast Cous Cous (originated by Vincent of the Jazz Quarters)

Here's a technique for a new breakfast dish we learned from the Innkeepers at the Jazz Quarters on our trip to New Orleans a few weeks ago. You can definitely get creative with the add - ins and it holds well in the 'fridge. It also is probably healthier than a lot of things most of us grab in the AM.

Take a cup of cous cous (we like the Israeli type but any kind will work) and sauté it in 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter for about 2 minutes.
Remove cous cous from the pan and wipe it out.

Boil one and one half cups of orange juice.

Get your add - ins together. The original uses handfuls each of dried cranberries, raisins, chopped walnuts, and slivered almonds. Set these aside.
Get your spices together: 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and salt.

Off heat, add the cous cous to the hot orange juice. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes.

Toss the slivered almonds into the dry pan for a few minutes; stay with them to avoid burning. Let cool.

Uncover the cous cous - it should have absorbed all of the orange juice - and stir in the seasonings and then the fruits and nuts.

Let the mixture cool before storing it in the refrigerator.

To serve, let a serving come to room temperature. Enjoy accompanied by vanilla yogurt and a drizzle of honey - or whatever else you like!

Happy Daylight Savings Time! Could not come fast enough for me.

Philly Food shopping/Flower Show Tips

I totally love the Reading Terminal Market - it has been our supermarket for over 25 years now. With the addition of the Fair Food Farmstand, we realized we literally had one stop shopping. That said, there are two times a year we seek to avoid it - The Auto Show and The Flower Show.

Plan ahead. Get your goods from RTM during the "in between times" - 2-5 PM. Do NOT try to shop at lunchtime all week and Saturdays.

If you are attending the Flower Show - we find mid week nights at around 5:00 PM to be the best time to enter - at 5:00ish.


After that - I have two other suggestions for those wanting to food shop: the Italian Market and East Passyunk Avenue (Mr Mancusso's, Green Aisle Grocery, etc.).


For post show Diners: Vietnam - hands down. Go there. Avoid Vietnam Palace across the street

Enjoy.