“For many years into my childhood, on Sunday morning, I would be sleeping, and I would be wakened up by sauteed onions in a pan,” Linda Gangemi recounted. “The aroma would come up to the second floor where my bedroom was.” 

That tempting waft? The smell of her mother’s homemade pasta sauce. 

“I’ve carried that aroma, that recipe with me all my life,” Linda said. 

Born in Astoria, New York, Linda learned to cook as a teenager, mostly from her mother Candida. Sometimes, her father would join them. He was the kind of man who could, in Linda’s words, effortlessly “whip up gnocchi in a half hour”; a skilled chef-eventually-turned-maître-d', he worked at many storied Italian restaurants in NYC—including one Greenwich village establishment that Linda remembers being called Marta’s.***

As a parent, Linda continued to make this iconic comfort food. On a Saturday or a Sunday, she would cook a big batch in preparation for their regular Wednesday pasta nights; often, she would share jars of sauce with the neighbors. No matter how many times she made it, Linda said, the dish always tasted wonderfully consistent and utterly delicious. “It’s just a plain, wonderful tomato sauce,” she summed up. “Nothing extra.”

Although Linda hasn’t made this multi-hour dish in quite a while—neither of her two sons cook very much—she added one thing at the end of our conversation that plumped my heart so full I had to share it here.

She said, “I think I’m going to make a batch one more time and give it to my sons and their wives to taste at this time of their lives, because they had it when they were kids, but I don’t think they’ve had it since.”

What could be better than that?

***I tried to locate Marta’s, and found no Greenwich Village restaurant with such a name. However, I did discover records of an Italian-French restaurant called Marta (see left), which operated at 75 Washington Place from at least 1921 to 1993. The location now houses one-Michelin-starred Blue Hill, where Justin Theroux proposed to Jennifer Aniston and where I had some of the best potatoes of my life.

INGREDIENTS

One large onion, finely chopped. 

Good olive oil

One pound of beef, ground. 

One large can San Marzano peeled tomatoes

Three cans Hunt’s tomato sauce (medium-sized)

One 6oz can of tomato paste

Three whole cloves (Linda likes them:“That makes the whole thing!” but these are optional)

Salt and pepper, to taste.

Cooked rigatoni or lasagna, for serving.

let’s cook!

1. Sauté onions in a pan with olive oil until translucent. 

2. Add beef, salt, and pepper, and cook until brown, pressing down with a wooden spoon to break up the meat. “Like you would a chili,” Linda advises.

3. Add tomato sauce, tomato paste, and peeled tomatoes. 

4. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Simmer for three hours. Linda emphasizes that this lengthy duration is essential.   Add around a cup’s worth of water to dilute the sauce as it reduces. 

6. Adjust seasoning to taste.

7. Store in the fridge and reheat when desired.

   When pairing this sauce with pasta, Linda recommends rigatoni. She also suggests utilizing this sauce in lasagna. HOWEVER, she highly discourages the use of spaghetti. In her words: “It just seems wrong.”