Matt's Famous Spaghetti Sauce From the Kitchen of Matt Jadud, 2004-06-22 I made a kick-ass spaghetti sauce, and have frozen most of it. While this harkens back more to my Midwestern roots than, say, the instincts that any Brit this side of the Mississippi might have (making food explicitly to freeze it, that is), it was the only thing I could do with the assload of sausage that was left behind after the barbeque. That, or invite twelve-thousand midgets over and convince them all that they loved sausage in exactly the same way that dogs love trucks.

Prep Time:  1 hours Cook Time:  2 hours Categories:  American  Dinner Yields:  1 months worth of food

Directions

1. Place onions, garlic, and pepperoni in food processor. Stop processing when it looks like no huge-assed chunks are left. It may help to quarter onions and dice pepperoni first; your food processor may vary.
2. Saute onions, garlic, and pepperoni in big pot with some of the olive oil.
3. While lightly sauteing o/g/p, process green peppers. Stop before they get completely pulverized. Add half-way through saute of o/g/p. At this point, season thoroughly with oregano, basil, fresh-ground black pepper, and two teaspoons (not table spoons) of hot chilli oil, preferably the kind that has lots of actual chilli bits in it. I get mine in the Soho district.
4. Process mushrooms. You will find that you have to do a few at a time, as they get all packed down and shit in the food processor. Occasionally use the cool plastic spatula that came with the food processor to scoop out mushroom paste into a bowl. Do all the mushrooms this way.
5. Before doing mushrooms (why didn't this come first?), chop up sausages. Place them in non-stick wok with more of the lots-of-olive-oil. Begin frying it up, lightly. This is a lot of sausage, BTW, so don't try and use some panzy-assed non-stick wok. Something bigish will do.
6. Back to the mushrooms. Finish processing them.
7. About 1/3rd of the way through cooking up the sausages, add one of the glasses of wine. Drizzle the honey over the sausage at this point. Season sausage well with basil and pepper, as well as anything else you have to hand that seems like it "might work."
8. If you haven't been drinking any of the other three glasses of wine, you're behind me at this point.
9. In fact, if you didn't have two beers and two fingers of Abelour before starting this whole process, you're definitely behind me.
10. Let the sausages simmer in the olive oil/wine/honey mixture until thoroughly done; be careful to keep the heat low. You want the mixture to be simmering, but you don't want to burn the tasty treats in the pan.
11. If you didn't sprinkle some salt in with the other seasonings, go ahead and do that now. Not too much, though; salt should be used to moderate and enhance other flavours, not overpower.
12. Add the mushrooms to the sautee; less time has passed than you think at this point. The goal is to A) avoid over-cooking the o/g/p/peppers before adding the mushrooms. Drizzle more of the olive oil all over the mushrooms, and go ahead and add a little bit of the wine to this; not too much, though: you're on a mission from God.
13. Spoon in two heaping teaspoons of pesto into the o/g/p/p/m mixture. Only do this if you have an open jar of pesto in the fridge at the moment. Especially if you don't know who it belongs to.
14. If you haven't been stirring both of the pots on the stove, go ahead and do this now.
15. When the sausages look good and done, go ahead and spoon those over with your wooden spoon; the oil will be quite hot, and you should burn your forearms from time-to-time just for good measure. Wine helps dull the pain. The onion/garlic/pepperoni/pepper/mushroom mix should be heated through, but you hopefully haven't over-cooked it at this point. Not that you can tell. Keep drinking.
16. Stir everything in.
17. Consider stopping at this point.
18. Decide tomatos would be good. If you have fresh tomatoes, I imagine 12-15 fresh tomatoes would be ideal at this point. If you don't have fresh tomatoes, go ahead and use the chopped tomatoes you have in tins. Not nearly as nice, but oh-so-cheap and oh-so-storable. Useful also in some Indian dishes.
19. Stir everything together. Lacking tomato paste, forgo it.
20. Stir occasionally while flipping from channel-to-channel (you only have four), catching bits of the news, occasionally a few seconds of Big Brother (it sucks), but most often highlights from Wimbledon.
21. Remove sauce from heat. Makes shitloads.