Spaghetti with Slow-Cooked Pork Sauce, January 22, 2015

I have a confession to make. For all my love of cooking, I had never, until Thursday, made one of those pasta sauces that you cook all day. I had actually considered it a huge accomplishment even to have made pasta sauce from scratch sometimes, the sort that takes 45 minutes to an hour to make. Honestly, though, when I'm making spaghetti, I almost always just add stuff to a jarred sauce, something like Newman's Own, and call it good.

Last week, though, I finally made a sauce that cooked for about 7 hours. It started with pork tenderloin. I was pretty nervous when people started telling me that was too lean a cut ever to work with a long, slow cook like this, but it collapsed into lovely, tender shreds in the sauce. I'm also not usually a "sweet" spice in red sauce kind of person, when it comes to mainstream foods. Allspice in kofta or nutmeg in pastitsio seem altogether different than cloves in chili or allspice in spaghetti sauce. But, it worked! I'd hoped to serve this over bucatini, but there was none, so it was served with De Cecco spaghetti, a Caesar salad (bagged), and some Pugliese bread.

Pork Sauce for Pasta

2 tbsp. butter 

2 tbsp. olive oil

1 and a half pound pork tenderloin

3 lg. onions, diced

4-5 stalks celery, diced

1/2 bunch parsley, chopped

5-6 cloves garlic, minced

14 oz. can diced tomatoes

28 oz. can tomato sauce

8 oz. can tomato paste

2 bay leaves

1 tsp. oregano

1/2 tsp. allspice

1/2 tsp. cloves

A big glug of dry red wine

Heat butter & oil in stockpot. Add pork and brown on all sides. Remove from pot. Cook onions, celery, parsley, and garlic in same pot until tender. Add diced tomatoes and cook 15 minutes. Add all but wine and stir well. Add pork, submerging in sauce, and cook on low, covered, 6-8 hours, stirring occasionally. When you hit the 4 or 5 hour mark, you may need some more liquid in the pot. Add dry red wine until it looks right. Even if you don't need more liquid, the wine adds terrific flavor.  Serves 6.