Easter 2024
We had Easter Sunday at home this year. On the same day Summer Time began in Germany. Even though the holiday got an hour shorter, we had a wonderful day together.
For breakfast J had onion quiche from a bakery at the Wiesbaden farmer's market. I am glad he liked it. I had kouglof from a French bakery in the downtown. The kouglof was ok but I think one we bought in Strasbourg tasted richer and had a finer texture.
We played an Easter egg hunt game. I hid thirty-two chocolate and marzipan eggs and then J looked for them. All eggs were found successfully!
My Easter staple, chick deviled eggs with mushroom-radishes were a starter for Easter dinner. We had a bowl of caesar salad according to J's request.
The main dish was spaghetti with tomato and meat sauce. It was a kind of dish I have never expected to serve on Easter Sunday. However, that wasn't an ordinary pasta dish. J found the recipe on Tasting History, one of his favorite youtube channels recently. It was the recipe of Chef Boyardee’s Spaghetti that the show composed based on his family recipe. I have never heard of him and I haven't seen his products actually. J told me that every grocery store in the State has canned pasta products of Chef Boyardee's brand. Ah-ha! Canned pasta products are something I don't pay attention in a grocery store. The Tasting History told me about the history of the Italian chef and the brand. The recipe wasn't for his canned pasta products but for a pasta sauce that the chef served at his restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio in 1930's. His food was very popular and his patrons often brought bottles of his spaghetti sauce home. The recipe was feasible and the host of the show, Max Miller praised his output. We both love pasta. Easter arrived in good time to try the special recipe that we both were curious about.
The tomato and meat sauce was relatively easy to make. In all the steps, the first step was the most time-consuming. That was pressing 1 kg canned whole tomatoes through a sieve to separate all the juice and pulp from the seeds. It took about a hour, which was longer than the simmering time (40 minutes) in the recipe. While I was handling the process, I was thinking of clicking 'buy' to purchase a food mill on Amazon although I won't need a food mill because I wouldn't use it often after all. I hope the seed-free, silky tomato sauce contributed to the result. The ingredients were minimum. In addition to tomatoes, olive oil, onions, carrots, mushrooms, basil, salt and black pepper, and of course, ground beef. That's all. No garlic or celery. No while/red wine, broth or milk. No herbs like bay leaves, thyme, rosemary. No extra like cayenne pepper, nutmeg, or anchovies. In short the result was pretty good. The sauce was strongly beefy but rounded with sweetness from the vegetables without simmering for hours. Basil added freshness. I liked to toss the boiled spaghetti with butter and cheese before serving with the sauce. Overall the dish tasted uncomplicated but comfortable. The dish reminded me of a lunch plate for children that I had at a restaurant in a department store in Japan when I was a child. It was a huge reward for me to go and eat lunch there. Therefore this is a compliment to Chef Boyardee. Meanwhile, honestly I think straining canned whole tomatoes wouldn't be critical. I wouldn't particularly identify tiny tomato seeds in the chunky sauce.
