Recipe 28- Spaghetti with Homemade Tomato Sauce

Recipe 28- Spaghetti with Homemade Tomato Sauce 

After a long 2+ weeks of recovering from Pneumonia, I have finally retuned to my kitchen and Blog.

Man it feels good! 

As you may of read in my last post,  I have been struggling with non stop ear infections. On May 17th I thought I had been hit yet again with another terrible infection. Turns out I had a very severe case of Pneumonia and was admitted to the hospital for 4 days. When I finally had come around to eating, I had to snap some pictures of the terrible hospital food to add them to my blog.

 All I could think about was how delicious a 'Michael Smith" dish would be. Unfortunately, I had to wait another  LONG week after being discharged to finally have enough of an appetite to get back in my kitchen and cook. 

I really appreciate your patience for waiting for me to get back on my feet and getting back to my blog.

Now we can all let out a HUGE "ewwwww" at how nasty hospital food is....

How do people get well eating this stuff!?!? 

As you can see from above, it was some horrible meals (I didn't eat much of them). When I was finally able to cook, I was really craving some true comfort food. Whats better then traditional Spaghetti & Sauce!? 

I started off with the sauce, which was a really easy thing to throw together.

I chopped my onions and garlic and got my pot of water on the stove for the pasta. 

One thing that Chef Michael says in the recipe, is to well salt your pasta water. 

He says the saltiness of the water should remind you of a " fresh day at the beach".

I feel like this is a very important tip, I have used it lots of times since watching his show and reading this book. It really helps the flavouring of the bland pasta. 

Next up, I pulled out my favourite skillet to start working on the sauce. 

A little olive oil and the onion are garlic are added to the pan. They are sautéed for a few minutes and then the tomatoes are added. I used whole San Marzano tomatoes and just crushed them by hand. These have become my new favourite canned tomatoes because the freshness is just amazing. 

  The sauce mixture is seasoned with some salt, pepper and traditional Oregano or Thyme. I used Oregano since that is what I had on hand. 

While my sauce was simmering away, my pot was ready to have the spaghetti tossed in. 

I also whipped up some homemade garlic butter for breadsticks. 

1/2c.cows creamery butter

4 minced cloves of garlic

small bundle of fresh cut chives, chopped small.

I whipped it all together in a bowl and spread the butter on some leftover hot dog buns split in half. 

I later on put these under the broiler for a few minutes and they made an excellent addition to this meal. 

I made sure that my pasta was just cooked to al dente, I really hate overcooked pasta. 

I made sure to test my noodles often, I wanted to make sure they did not become overcooked.. and not to mention the smells of my kitchen were making me starving, so slightly crunchy spaghetti noodles would have to do haha! Anyone else do this? 

All in, I think this recipe took me about 20 mins to prepare and get to my table. 

The sauce is an excellent vessel to either add meat (ground beef, chicken) or even meatballs. Chef Michael also has an excellent meatball recipe available online that I think EVERYONE should try, they are to DIE for! 

This recipe was absolutely delicious on its own with no added meat. It was also so quick and easy that it would make a great week day meal for anyone. 

I also added freshly grated parmesan cheese to the top. YUM! 

My kids and husband were very quiet while enjoying dinner and the plates were empty in no time. I think everyone was secretly craving Chef Michaels recipes as much as I was! 

As always my compliments to the Chef and cheers to you, my friends! 

Keep an eye out this week for a new blog post EVERYDAY! 

I have been busy catching up on cooking, so this week will be 

"Michael Smithpalooza" 

Lots of cooking and lots of blog posts!