The Sauce - part II

Ok, Got wine in hand? Good. Here's your list of stuff:

1. Tomato product of choice - for this recipe, I prefer tomato sauce, no seeds. If you wanna get nuts, cook tomatos down and make your own sauce, but it's not necessary. What is necessary is that it be plain tomato, no pre-spiced crap. I use organic, no-salt sauce and/or chopped tomatos, depending on what texture I want. Also note, there is one benefit to canned tomoatos; they are much more consistent than fresh tomatos are. Try a few different things, though; self expression through texture is a good thing. I like a loose and chunky sauce (diced or chopped tomoatos) in hot weather, and a real thick one based on canned sauce in cold weather.
2. Tomato paste, or other thickening agent. I prefer organic paste, with as little salt as possible. Other great thickeners I've used include flour, corn starch, and cheese (parmesan or romano, finely grated or ground into a powdery consistency). Cheeses should be used sparingly though, so I mainly rely on paste most of the time. Again, fast, easy, and an acceptable place to save some time in my mind.
3. Spices: Oregano, Parsley, Basil, and dry red pepper flakes. I think red pepper is one of the great secrets to good sauces. It can give a little nudge, or can be used to push your sauce towards an Arrabiata (hot and spicey) sauce. I like it closer to the latter, but again, self expression is ok, and you might want to make sure that your diners like it hot before you add too much red pepper flake. You should have a little glass spice jar worth of each. If I catch you using a "seasoning mix" or that stuff that says "Italian seasoning" on the side, I'll send Mario to your house to tap dance on your skull with his orange clogs.
4. Meat. Lots of meat. I go with about 1.5 pounds of ground round or sirloin per 2 large cans of tomato sauce. I like sirloin because it has just enough fat (I use a dash of olive oil with sirloin but not with round). Beef has some flavor without taking over everything. Ground buffalo will work too. I think pork tastes too much like... well, pork, and I don't do veal. Turkey has too little fat, and well, I just don't like the taste.
5. Garlic and onions. Garlic rules; it's tasty, it's good for you, it just rocks. Onions too. Choose nice large, firm bulbs of garlic. Make sure you keep it nice and dry, and if you have limited knife skills (hey, no shame there, you ain't cookin' on tv, right?), invest in a nice garlic press to make life easy. Onions, you want large, firm, and sweet. Remember that no wine rule? Here's why: a good sweet onion kicks the ass of wine at sweetening the sauce, taking the sting out of tomato acids, and it adds lots of texture too. Again, you need to get a good chop (not as fine as the garlic), so if you're not a great dicer, invest in a small manual chopper. Or, you can do what I do: bribe your wife, who has better knife skills, with wine and a good Santuko knife and get her to help do the chopping. Just, uh, make sure you give her the wine after the knife weilding part is done so she doesn't end up nicknamed "lefty."
6. Olive oil. Just a little. I also recomend it for dipping bread, and think it added just a nice subtle hint of flavor to the sauce. As mentioned above, if you use a fattier meat, you may want to skip this part, or plan on browning the meat and draining extra fat before adding the meat to the sauce pan.

Ok, must have kitchen stuff: your wooden spoon, knife/chopping implements, and a really heavy sauce pan with a lid. I can't emphasize this enough: heavy pan, heavy lid. You need enough pan to hold on to the heat for a while so that your sauce can cook nice and slow. Slow gets more flavor out, and it works best when you can let the mass of the pan work for you.

Ok. Time to cook.