The Secret Ingredient

Memory:

My "recipe" for my spaghetti sauce would have to be my real husband, Michael. Both of us lived most of our lives in and near Italian neighborhoods in Bridgeport, New Haven and Stratford, Connecticut. It doesn't really matter what your ethnic background is up north - Irish, Jewish, African American, Polish, Asian. When you live in the shadow of Pepi's Pizza, you grow up speaking a form of Sicilian dialect, and it never occurs to you that the rest of the United States doesn't.

Naturally, our favorite foods are Italian. But now that we live in North Carolina, my real husband and I must travel 2 hours down to Charlotte for a holy pilgrimage to Dean & DeLuca's Delicatessen in the Queen's City when we want to close our eyes and breathe in the heady aroma of Genoa salami and Reggiano Parmesan in one room. It isn't always easy being an ex-patriot far away from home.

But it is particularly difficult for my Italian loving husband to live in the south. First of all, he has a Yankee accent. He'll ask for a cup of "cuawfee." He'll take his car to a "caa wash," and he calls a friend of ours down here "Chaalie." Secondly, his car's license plate reads "YANK4LFE," and he's not referring to the baseball team. Finally, when he goes to an Italian restaurant to order a cheese pizza, he will ask for a scamorza (or as we grew up saying "scamotz"). No one down here knows what the heck he's talking about. You can't even buy scamorza down here. But does that deter him from asking for it? No. For some unknown reason, he feels he must be loyal to his own strange Sicilian food code.

When he is especially homesick, I know it is time to make his spaghetti sauce. But my Michael is rather high maintenance when it comes to food. He won't eat meat, sugar, white flour, salt or anything else that's delicious, and I do my very best to cook for him the way he likes. But Italians don't cook like that. The sauce he likes has meat in it, and salt and lots of other things. So, I revert to my secret ingredients and only my daughter knows the truth. The biggest secret of all is pure, white sugar. He would die, roll over and come back to life again if he ever knew there was sugar in his sauce. He knows I make the sauce with sweet Italian sausage, but he doesn't eat that part of the sauce, because, as Michael puts it, "I don't eat flesh." Fine, but you do eat sugar.

I got this recipe from the wife of a musician I used to work with in New Haven when I sang professionally. The band would rehearse at his house and his adorable, little Italian American wife would make enough sauce for her family and the entire West Haven Sons of Italy to eat for a week. Since I could never read music I wasn't much help with song arrangements, so I would take a break and keep her company while she cooked. She was a master. I watched; I learned. My recipe isn't exactly like her's. She would use body parts of animals I don't even want to think about to flavor her sauce, but the idea is pretty close. Everyone has their own version of this American standard. This is the one my husband calls the best. But, when my son-in-law comes over, I add meatballs and pork chops to the sauce too.

Recipe:
New Haven Italian Spaghetti Sauce.
Most of this is in my head, but this is the best I can put on paper.

2 lbs. sweet Italian sausage links
Olive oil
1 to 2 onions chopped
3 to 4 minced garlic cloves
8 oz. slice mushrooms
1 palm full of dry oregano
1 palm full of dry basil
salt and pepper to taste
1 large can whole peeled tomatoes (I buy San Marzano - better than fresh)
2 small cans tomato paste (whatever - Michael insists on organic)
2 tbs. or more sugar
1/2 to 1 cup good red wine
equal parts water of the tomato paste and the Marzano cans.

• Place the sweet sausage in a heavy, large, cold pot. Add 1/4 cup water to the pan. Turn the heat to medium high and cover for about 10 minutes or until the meat is steamed cooked.

• Remove the lid and allow the water to boil off and brown the sausage on all sides. Good sausage will make its own grease. Remove the meat from the pan and add 3 to 4 tbs. olive oil.
  

• Add the onions, mushrooms and garlic to the hot oil. Add salt, pepper, oregano, basil and any thing else that says Italian to you at this point and let the vegetables cook until they pick up the color of the meat. Add back the sausage.

• While the vegetables are cooking, I usually pour the tomatoes into a bowl and squash them in my hand to break up the whole tomatoes before I put them in the pan.
  

• Add the tomatoes and one equal can's amount of water to the pan.

• Add the tomato paste and, again, equal amounts of water. Let the sauce come to a boil and reduce the heat to a low simmer.
  

• Leave the lid off the pan. It may splatter all over the kitchen but leave it off. The sauce needs to reduce and that won't happen with the lid on.
  

• After the sauce starts to thicken, taste it for flavor. At this point add more salt, seasonings and the sugar starting with 1 tbs. Let it cook for a minute, taste again. Add more sugar, if needed. Don't go overboard or else it will taste like tomato candy soup and your husband will finally know what you're doing.
  

• Add the wine. If it does get too sweet, add more wine. Let the sauce cook until it is more of a ragu than a sauce. This could take 3 to 4 hours. We Americans like our sauce thick and hearty.
  

Thought:
Wives should never lie to their husbands. But my mother taught me well. She said she never lied to my father. She just never told him everything.