No Reservations (the movie) Spaghetti

Fill and boil a pot of water, and while it is coming to a boil start finely chopping the garlic and chop the onion. If making the sauce with a meat put a large sauce pan over medium heat and drizzle Extra Virgin Olive Oil onto it, once hot add the meat and if using ground up meat just break it up with a spatula, add salt and pepper to the meat. Once the meat looks 3/4 of the way cooked (only a little pink), flip over the meat so it can cook on the other side and add the white wine to deglaze the pan, let the white wine reduce out to cook out the alcohol and leave the sweet wine taste. Add in the onions and the garlic to the mixture and let it sit and sweat out for a minute or two.

By now the water should be boiling, add a little olive oil to the boiling water (this makes it so when you take out the pasta it won’t stick together) and generously salt the boiling water (this allows you to season the pasta itself). And add in the spaghetti, occasionally stirring. Cook until aldente.

After the garlic and onions has sat for 1 or 2 minutes add in the tomato sauce, the tomato paste, and the diced tomatoes (make sure you drain the can first!). Finely chop the Oregano and Basil and add it to the mixture and occasionally stir until the sauce is of the consistency that you want it to be, shouldn’t be more than 5 mins or so. Taste the sauce and add the appropriate amount of salt and pepper that you feel it needs. When the sauce is ready add a ladle full of the boiling water from the pasta pot this will add some of the starch that had boiled off the spaghetti into the water and add it into your sauce to give it a thicker consistency, stir that in. Then drain the spaghetti and add it to your sauce and mix it all together. Serve and enjoy! (Optional you can add whole fresh basil leaves to the finished dish on top to give it that extra bit of flavor)