A Marriage That I Can Get Behind

Nothing will improve the red sauce dishes coming out of your home kitchen more than learning about marriage. I’m not talking about humans, I am preaching about forging strong bonds upon a foundation of trust and respect for quality ingredients.

Your pasta and sauce should share a checking account. Just before plating, these two should become one. Amen.

In my decades of eating people’s food, very few people do this at home.

Maybe you make a decent sauce (it’s probably under-seasoned), or follow a recipe from your Grandma that yields everyone’s favorite meatballs. Like sports, business, and most things in life, all of the rewards are in the finishing. That’s what we are covering today.

If you live near us, the best real life example that I can think offer is Caffe Tosca’s Spaghetti and Meatballs. If you go, get the entree size so that you can run it back for lunch tomorrow. The dish is miles better than your typical S+MB. And I think it’s the finishing that puts it over the top.

Here’s the Caffe’s dish. Sauce clings to noodle.

Let’s get set up for success. You should have pasta boiling and sauce simmering. If you live in an apartment with a tiny kitchen like I do, the stove top will be butts to nuts.

Close by, you’ll want:

• a microplane or some other cheese grater with tiny holes.

• a fistful of fresh basil. Buy it at the store that day so that it is bright green and dry.

• a hunk of good parm reggie or pecorino romano or both. do not buy pre-grated.

• a large frying pan on medium heat on a third burner.

You are going to marry the sauce to the pasta in this large pan. Ladle in some of your red sauce. If it scorches, the pan is too hot. It should lightly bubble away. Pull your pasta out of the water one or two minutes before it’s done (it will finish cooking with the sauce) and get it into the pan. Hang onto a coffee mug’s worth of the starchy pasta water. Start working the pasta and sauce together. Try to do the sexy flick toss. Tongs are a good backup. Drizzle in a little (couple TBSP maybe) pasta water and keep it moving.

Now grate in a generous pile of cheese, using your microplane. You want the cheese to land in a fluffy dusting across your product. Toss it again. Do another flurry of fresh cheese snow. Toss again. What you should see happen is that the cheese is melting into the mix, making the sauce stick to the pasta. This is what we are after.

Plate the pasta in a nest. Put two or three meatballs into the nest like bird’s eggs. Tear some pieces of basil and scatter it around. It should be fragrant and fresh. The scent will balance the richness of the meat and cheese. You might add a little more fresh grated cheese to please the eye. You could drizzle a whisper of good olive oil around the dish. If you really give a shit, you might wipe any sauce splatters from the rim of your dish with a towel.

You might be thinking, Christ Tom, this seems like a ton of cheese. It is. It’s an assload. This isn’t health food. We’re chasing the feeling of temporary safety that we get from a full belly. Unbutton your pants.

Here’s what the Sunday Sauce coming out of my kitchen looks like.

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A couple last notes about Caffe Tosca:

I just found out that Cafe is french and Caffe is Italian, but you probably knew that already.

If you haven’t been to the Caffe, it’s the “wear jeans to work on Fridays” version of its big sister across the street [Tosca]. I like the idea of siblings on the same block, looking out for each other. You can sometimes catch a glimpse of a chef bringing ingredients across the street during prep.

I’ve been regularly fed above average meals by both siblings. Steak frites, paper thin flat breads, seafood specials. But if you want to have your doors blown off, order the spaghetti and meatballs.