Food for Thought

Last week I thought I had hit the recipe lottery!  One of the local on-line pages I read regularly put me in touch with a gal I really wanted to know.   She is related to the family who ran a restaurant in town many years ago.   When my husband and I were first married we ate at the Boston Spaghetti House every chance we got.  It was nothing more than a one room hole-in-the-wall that served the best spaghetti I’ve ever eaten in my life.

The years have flown by, but I well remember those early days when we often had too much month left at the end of the money.  But, if we were very careful, we sometimes had four or five dollars left just before payday.  That was plenty of cash to buy two heaping plates of spaghetti, a half loaf of squishy-soft Italian bread and all the water you could drink. 

The moment you pulled into the parking lot of this tiny place the smell of garlic and onion and oregano curled its way into your nostrils.  My stomach would begin to make noises usually associated with whale distress signals as I anticipated the delicious meal ahead. 

Eating out was a special treat in those days; we didn’t have the money required for much more than this spaghetti house.  Although it improved over the years, at that time my newly-wed cooking skills were stretched to the breaking point after I fried an egg and/or opened a can of soup.  Needless to say we really looked forward to this occasional spaghetti dinner.

We spent many Saturday evenings there, meeting friends, laughing and talking and getting on with life.  

As the years passed our family grew, our income grew, but I never outgrew my love of the sauce created in that tiny kitchen at the Boston.  It was brown, not red.  The meat was finely processed but abundant, and the taste was unique.  Try as I might, I was never able to duplicate it. 

I have spent many research hours in cookbooks and on the web searching for a recipe like the one the cook used way back then.  I’ve read every recipe from Bolognese to Italian Gravy…all for nothing.  The end result is always hours of preparation, plenty of money and thousands of gallons of dish water to clean up what always turns out to be a disappointing result.   I’ve found some really good sauce recipes….just not the Boston sauce.  What is the ingredient I’ve been missing?

Then, last week, I connected with this lady and I thought I finally had it!  !  After chatting with her on line, she graciously sent me her Mother’s recipe!  Working behind the scenes, her Mother must have made many, many gallons of sauce for the hungry newlyweds and old derelicts that came through the doors each night. I was thrilled beyond explanation; I had found the Holy Grail of spaghetti sauce recipes.

Larry and I set out that very day to get the ingredients.  The recipe was for a large quantity, but we decided to go ahead and make it that way so we wouldn’t compromise the results in any way!  We shopped and chopped and stirred and stirred and stirred.  I was concerned that the sauce bubbling away in the biggest soup pot I own didn’t resemble the sauce I remembered.  I poo-pooed my own misgivings and kept cooking.

Finally the sauce was done; exactly to the recipe.   I anxiously filled a small dish and took it into my husband’s den.  As he tasted, then tasted again I impatiently shifted from foot to foot.  “Well?  What do you think?”  He was silent; his forehead wrinkled in thought.   Finally I took a sample myself.  No dice.  This is good sauce, but it’s not THAT sauce.   Sigh.

So…I start all over in my search for the delicious sauce we both remember from so long ago.  I froze most of the vat of sauce I just made.  It’s good…but it’s not right.

Maybe that’s what I get for chasing a memory…for trying to recreate the past.  I’ve already read the complete works of half a dozen chefs and pestered everyone in this town trying to find this recipe; I’m much too tenacious to stop now.

If I ever find that recipe I am going to throw the biggest spaghetti dinner that anyone has ever seen.  I promise to feed everyone I know, and anyone who doesn’t move fast enough to get away from me!   It’s my own personal quest.  Everybody needs one, don’t they?

 

                                                                             Life is Good