Customer Recipe: MaryClaire’s Desperation Meat Sauce
Desperation Meat Sauce (serves 2-3) shared with us from @mc5ulli
This recipe is inspired by leftovers, my hatred of food waste, and an incredible wine-soaked dinner my partner and I had in Venice Beach, CA a couple years ago. I call it desperation meat sauce because it’s what I make when I have no plan and nothing in my fridge, and is a great way to turn an extra link of sausage, the contents of your crisper drawer, and a couple pantry items into a full entrée. The basic concept is to brown the meat, cook the vegetables down until they caramelize, and reduce the tomato sauce until it’s super concentrated.
This recipe is meant to use up what you have on hand. If you’re gonna go out and buy a vegetable, I like fennel, but in the photo I used the end of a head of napa cabbage. A cauliflower or broccoli stalk could be great here, too! Here are a few guidelines for swapping in other vegetables:
If you’re using a root vegetable (like a turnip): grate it instead of slicing.
If you’re using something leafy like kale: remove and chop the ribs and cook them with the onions. Add the leaves in step 6 so they don’t disintegrate.
Keep in mind that the flavor of the vegetable you use will influence the flavor of the finished dish even though you might not be able to pick out the flavor of the vegetable itself. Ex. adding a carrot would make it sweeter.
I would not recommend beets for this, but you do you.
1 t fennel seeds (optional)
1 link of KP’s sausage, removed from casing (alternately, ¼-⅓ lb of cubed bacon or ground meat of any kind)
2 T extra virgin olive oil
½ lg yellow onion, thinly sliced
½ bulb of fennel or 1-2 c of any non-starchy vegetable, thinly sliced or grated (see notes above)
1-2 T tomato paste
1 t Red pepper flakes (any kind will do, add more if you like it spicy)
Freshly ground black pepper
1-2 anchovy fillets (optional)
3 oz dry red or white wine (I usually use white)
1 ¼ c. (10 oz) canned crushed tomatoes
Salt (I’m not gonna give you a measurement, use your judgement and taste buds)
6 oz spaghetti (Or whatever pasta shape you have on hand)
Grated parmesan (or other hard, aged cheese)
Finishing olive oil (optional)
In a dry, medium saucepan or dutch oven, toast the fennel seeds over medium-low heat until fragrant. Remove from heat and lightly crush with a knife or mortar and pestle. Set aside.
In the same saucepan, heat 1T olive oil over medium heat. Add sausage in a single layer. Wait until you start to see browning around the edges of the meat, then break it up. Cook until meat is evenly browned but not crispy (crispy = hard bits in your sauce). Remove meat from pan and set aside. Leave in browned bits and any remaining oil/fat.
Add remaining 1T olive oil to the pan. Add onion and fennel and season with salt. Turn heat down to medium low and cook slowly, stirring occasionally, until the onions take on a light-medium brown color and all vegetables are very very soft. Turn down the heat if the onions start to brown too quickly, and add a splash of water if they look dry. This should take a while, but don’t turn the heat up or you’ll fry them instead of caramelizing them.
Once the vegetables are fully caramelized, add tomato paste, reserved fennel seeds, red pepper flakes, black pepper and anchovy fillets to the pan. Cook for a few minutes until the tomato paste takes on a darker, brick red color, stirring to break up the anchovy.
Add the wine and deglaze, scraping up all the browned bits at the bottom of the pan. Turn the heat back up to medium to reduce the wine by about half.
Add the canned crushed tomatoes and meat back to the pan and stir. Bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to medium low.
Meanwhile, start your water boiling for your pasta. I use a large stockpot and about 5 qts of water, salted until it tastes salty (for 5qts, I probably add ~2T). Once boiling, add pasta and cook until just before al dente (it will finish in the sauce, so you want a little bite). Drain pasta, reserving 1 c pasta water.
Once the pasta sauce has visibly reduced (bubbles should look like they're having trouble escaping as it simmers, usually ~20 minutes over medium-medium low heat), add pasta to sauce along with ½ cup pasta water. Taste and adjust salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Thin the sauce with the remaining pasta water if it has become too thick.
When pasta is fully cooked and sauce is seasoned to your liking, serve in shallow bowls, topping with freshly grated cheese and a drizzle of finishing olive oil.
