Condo Cooking

We continued our travel adventures with our neighbors, Bob and Gloria, leaving Park City and heading to Telluride, where we were meeting up with their friends, Doug and Nanci, to share a 3 bedroom condo at the River Club. The culinary question facing Gloria was whether to have Bob’s birthday party catered or whether we could pull off a nice home-cooked meal for eight in the condo.
We took a quick inventory of the kitchen equipment and noted the following: no grill, no cake pans, no food processor, no mixer, 1 stock pot, 1 small wooden salad bowl, 7 dinner plates. We quickly decided that baking a cake was out of the question, but concluded that a simple dinner was possible with a few kitchen items to be provided by the condo staff and some high quality ingredients that we found at the market in Mountain Village. Getting a cake baked with only 24 hours notice during “off”-season proved to be quite a challenge, especially carrot cake, Bob’s favorite, but we managed that through the New Sheridan restaurant in downtown Telluride.

The easiest condo dinner Gloria and I could come up with was a spaghetti dinner with Italian sausage and bolognese sauce, garlic bread and a large tossed salad. Gloria created a lovely antipasti platter with dry salami, cheeses, olives, tomatoes and a Tapenade.

Here is the recipe for the spaghetti sauce in case you find yourself in a condo yearning for a home cooked meal, while in possession of only limited kitchen equipment.

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
6 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 lb. Italian sausage (5 links)
2 lbs. Angus beef
3 teaspoons salt
3 28 oz. cans Italian plum tomatoes
1 12 oz. Can tomato paste
Some or all of these spices, depending on how many jars of spices you want to buy:
1 1/2 teaspoons oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Directions:
In a frying pan, Brown the sausage and cut each of the links into 3 pieces.
Brown the ground beef and drain on paper towels.

In a large stock pot, heat the olive oil and cook the onion until translucent, adding the garlic for just another minute or two. Add the tomatoes, paste, salt and spices and bring to a simmer. Cook sauce for 30 minutes, add sausage and ground beef and cook for another 45 minutes on low heat, just simmering the sauce.

Cook the pasta and add just enough of the sauce to the pasta to moisten it. Plate the spaghetti and pass the sauce with the Italian sausage. Place a bowl of freshly grated parmesan or Romano cheese. Serve with a mixed green salad, tossed with a high quality olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and garlic bread.