For serving with Spaghetti
2 tablespoons tomato puree
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 cup dry white wine
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 onion, chopped
1/2 lb. lean beef, passed twice through mincer

"Heat oil and in it brown onion and garlic and meat, add tomato paste and cook for a further five minutes before adding pepper, salt, bay leaf, water and wine. Cover and allow to cook slowly for one hour, stirring from time to time; remove bay leaf and cook a few minutes longer before serving with spaghetti."

This recipe was taken from "Italian Cooking" by Dorothy Daly. It was published by Spring Books in Great Britain. For the complete copyright-free cookbook see www.archive.org.... P.S. Not only did Dorothy Daly indroduce to the English-speaking world the wonders of a wide variety of Italian dishes, she also offered her readers a wide variety of ways the same Italian dishes are presented. She alone among all her contemporaries included two now well-known tomato meat sauces -- one with meatballs, and the other with minced beef. This woman made it her business to know both the high end and low end Italian cuisine. She must have visited well-known restaurants, and not so well-known restaurants, and I bet she spent time watching what the poor people ate as well. It's hard to say how she gathered her information as not a word has been written about her (At least not anything that is readily available on the internet). Whichever way she did it, she got it right. Even the presentation of her recipes -- with ingredients and directions separated -- gives her book a very modern feel to it. The other cookbooks available at www.archive.org did not do this (an annoying fact). Also, as the author includes some personal observations along with her recipes, her cookbook fits in very nicely with 21st century literary aesthetics. Photo and notes: Mary Melfi.

Back to main list