Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Dirty Spaghetti? Yep.

Good morning and welcome back.

It’s official, the Universe is conspiring against me right now. I’ve given up asking “What the fuck is next?” Because honestly? I don’t want to fucking know.

My goddamn freeway burned down this week!

A fucking freeway!

Here! Check out this shit!

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/110-freeway-tunnel-fire-san-pedro/

What the everlasting fuck!

For two whole fucking days the time of my commute fucking doubled.

This is not a good town to take surface streets.

There are only 2 streets that realistically will get you out of San Pedro without the freeway. There’s a third but you really don’t know how long Paseo Del Mar will avoid falling in the Pacific so that’s not a viable choice.

Without the freeway we had motherfucking semis on our surface streets. Every intersection with a traffic light was fucking gridlock and it was just goddamn insane! On consecutive days it took me almost an hour and a half to commute 14 miles.

Fuck you Universe! Fuck you very much!

At least I’m in a new vehicle and the injuries are gradually improving.

Fuck it, I’m going to crunch some serious numbers and see if I can retire in October, this shit has gotten out of control.

Enough already

Food.

Food is why we’re here.

We’re going back to our “viral” foods theme today with a recipe that wasn’t viral in the 90’s, it wasn’t viral 5 years ago, nope. This shit is on fire RIGHT NOW.

One of my employees does the social media thing, it’s cool I like them anyway, and she told me about this recipe. Said it was the hip and happening thing all over the social shit.

Our dish today is “Dirty Spaghetti.”

Get your goddamn minds right people, it’s called “Dirty” because it’s a similar preparation as Dirty Rice. You know, the Creole dish.

Made with a Holy Trinity and lots of Creole spices, this would be a great side dish to serve alongside a bowl of gumbo or with some crawdads or a nice piece of blackened fish.

You get the idea.

Best part is this one, again, is quick, tasty and fast to put together.

We got our recipe inspiration today from Allrecipes.com. A fantastic website for any and all recipes. They consistently have excellent base recipes and you can never go wrong using them as a jump off point when giving a new recipe a try.

Let’s get busy.

Dirty Spaghetti!

2 tablespoons olive oil

8-12 ounces ground beef

1 medium yellow onion, diced

1 1/2 cups diced bell pepper

1/2 cup diced celery

4 ounces andouille sausage, diced or sliced

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 cups beef broth

8 ounces spaghetti

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2 cup sliced green onions, for garnish (optional)

Make the creole blend first by combining all of the spices. This also greatly speeds up the cooking process because you can dump all this shit in at once rather than measuring each one out individually. Shit, mix the spices together a couple of days in advance if you need to.

Collect the meats.

I went 90-10% beef today because we’re not draining the browned meat and this will reduce the amount of grease. As my ass gets older I’m finally starting to pay attention to this.

You can definitely use ground turkey or chicken, pork or even the Impossible stuff. There are plenty of other ingredients involved to deliver the full flavor to the final results regardless of your choice of protein.

The andouille sausage was pre-sliced which was a nice touch. It was pretty goddamn tasty on its own too. Think I might make a batch of red beans and rice and throw some of the leftover sausage in there.

Mince up your trinity.

Yes I used a red bell pepper. Green bell is the general choice for Creole cooking but this was a personal thing. I just really dig red bell pepper, that’s all.

When making this dish and reading the ingredient list I noticed a disturbing omission.

Where’s the motherfucking garlic guys?

How the fuck are we supposed to do Creole without the fer Chrissake garlic?

Don’t forget the garlic is what I’m suggesting.

That’s about 3-4 cloves minced.

Grab yourself a pot or Dutch oven for this one.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, you only need 1 pot for the entire meal. Hell, if you’re eating by yourself you can just eat out of the goddamn pot you cooked in! I ain’t here to judge!

Think how many goddamn dishes you’ll be saving!

You’re doing the planet a favor!

Pour in a few glugs of oil as your pan heats up over medium heat.

Sweat the trinity in the heated oil for anywhere between 3-10 minutes. Depends on how much “character” you want the veggies to have in the finished dish.

I did the sweat down for 7-8 minutes.

That’s plenty enough character for my taste.

Add in the ground beef.

Cook just long enough to lightly brown the beef.

Add in the sausage.

This sausage was precooked/smoked so we only had to cook for an additional 3-4 minutes.

In goes the garlic and spice blend next. Yeah just dump that whole bowl of spices in.

Think this shit will have some flavor? I got your “character” right here.

Stir this up well to fully blend in the spices.

Add in the beef stock and the Worcestershire sauce next.

You only need to cook for an additional 2-3 minutes at this point.

Remember a couple of weeks back when we did the baked tomato/feta thing?

I used up half of the box of this pasta.

We’re going to use the 2nd half of that spaghetti right chere!

In order to fit that one pot concept AND to impart maximum flavor, rather than boiling the pasta separately we are going to cook it in our big ass, bold flavor sauce and meat mixture.

Break the spaghetti in half.

Cover tightly with a lid then set a timer for 2 minutes.

Yes, just like that.

What we’re going to do here is cook for two minutes, stir, cook for 2 minutes repeat until we get to the desired doneness of the pasta. I actually love this technique.

Check the progress after the first 2 minutes.

Yeah, that ain’t even close to done.

Repeat the “Cover for two minutes then stir thing” 4-5 more times until the pasta is cooked to your preference.

Yeah that’s it.

Grab a plate.

Maybe a slab of garlic bread and a side salad then jump the fuck on in.

It’s definitely got that “Dirty” thing going. Tons of Creole going on. Love the trinity, love the sausage, the ground beef is tasty and the pasta is cooked perfectly.

So, yeah.

You know? I don’t love it. It’s perfectly tasty and you can dump some Louisiana hot sauce on there if you want but, I don’t know. It was alright.

I think the pasta fucked with me. If this was served as dirty rice then I think I would have loved it. My brain kept thinking, “Where are the tomatoes?”

Do give this a try if it looks interesting to you. It did not suck and maybe it was just me but I think it fooled my expectations with the flavor and textures.

How’s that for a ringing fucking endorsement??!!

This week’s “Fun” holidays courtesy of “A Bit of Good News:” May 10 is National Golf Day, National Military Spouse Appreciation Day, National Public Gardens Day, National Shrimp Day, National Small Business Day and Mother’s Day.

If your Mom is still alive, first off congratulations, second off… Ah hell I’m not going to tell you how to treat your moms. Be yourself.

Enjoy your Sunday everyone and let’s meet up again next week.

I will have something a bit different than normal. Think you’ll like it.

Until then.