Dinner Recipe:
Ingredients:
Onion, zucchini, tomato sauce, pasta noodles, olive oil, ground beef, various spices.
(1) Start out by cutting up onions into extremely fine pieces. Half an onion will suffice; however, a whole onion is ideal.
(2) Let your chopped onion simmer into 3/4 cup of olive oil. Allow this until it's slightly brown.
(3) Skin and chop up about a half-cup of a full-sized zucchini into the oil/onion mix. Fry this slowly until all the zucchini chunks are 3/4 cooked. You may need to add more olive oil at this point.
(4) Throw in the mixture about a half-pound of ground beef. Cook everything fully.
(5) At this point you will need to add in some spices. I prefer to wait until the tomato sauce is added to put herb spices. For now, determine how much salt, garlic/onion powder, and other spices you want to add. When in doubt, smell the mixture, then smell the spice, and make a snap decision on whether it would improve the quality.
**Disclaimer** The most important step is the one listed below.
(6) Add tomato sauce to the mixture. Be careful not to add a lot of tomato sauce, usually, one 8 oz. can should suffice. The reason for adding so much olive oil in step 2 is to make the sauce combination really oily. Don't worry, olive oil is not an unhealthy oil like vegetable oil or corn oil is.
**The reason you want your pasta sauce to be more oily than saucy is because olive oil is one of the best mediums for transferring flavor. There are typically 4 steps in making a genuine Italian pasta: (A) add onions/garlic to the oil, (B) add a vegetable (zucchini, egg plant, squash, carrot, celery, etc.) to the mixture, (C) add a meat (chicken, ground beef, sea food, etc.) to the mixture, and lastly, (D) add the sauce (tomato, white, pesto, etc.) to the mixture and top it off with seasonings. By following this procedure, the flavors are each subsequently conjoined with the olive oil, all while mixing and transferring in order to create a most flavorful, oily sauce at the end. To drown it all with tomato sauce would defeat the purpose of all the previous steps. This is the most distinguishable difference between American sauces and Italian: Italian sauces don't taste like tomato sauce at all!
(7) After making your delicious, oily pasta sauce--Mix the sauce in with the pasta noodles. Don't have two separate pots of noodles and sauce, you want to thoroughly mix the noodles with the sauce--for that's how real Italians do it. Any noodles will do for this sauce. I prefer to stay away from spaghetti/linguini. Usually Rotini, Farfalle, or pasta shells are preferable. Don't forget to have salt and pepper on the table either. Sometimes, the difference between an okay pasta and a delectable one is found in a tablespoon of salt. It can make all the difference!
Now you know how to make a genuine Italian pasta. Hope you button up your apron and enjoy! :)
Prep-Time: 10 minutes
Cook- Time: 1 hour
Difficulty Level: 2.5 out of 5
Ingredients: pasta, tomato sauce, onions/garlic, ground beef, spices, olive oil, zucchini.
Signature/ Source: Patrick Dabel
Enjoy some other dinner recipes as well.
Enjoy some other dinner recipes as well.
