It's Irie: American (Italian?) Home Cooking on Irie

Since we’ve been living on Irie, Mark has been craving a very special pasta sauce from his (younger) days spent with friends in the Oakland, CA area. I have heard a lot about this wonderful sauce and, based on the descriptions, wished I could have tried it. Not that my spaghetti bolognaise isn’t any good or special, but – we ALL know – Sean’s sauce is the best. To reproduce this famed pasta sauce, however, we needed the right ingredients, a few hours to spare and … the recipe!

Words and ravings turned into deeds a little while ago and Mark contacted his friend Sean to obtain his family’s scrumptious pasta sauce recipe. I was sent to Grenada’s most extensive supermarket, the IGA in Spice Island Mall, and came home with Italian sausages (expensive!), ground beef and pork (no veal available), fresh parsley (lucked out on that one), a block of Parmesan cheese (luxury!), Italian bread crumbs and tomato-based products. The other ingredients (spices, garlic and the like) already made their way to Irie as usual provisions. A visit to the fresh meat store in Whisper Cove Marina added a 4-pack of lamb merguez to the meal idea. Other than the canned tomatoes, no vegetables took part!

When you go through a bit of effort and expense to make a special dinner, it is customary to invite some friends to participate in the extravaganza. Susanne and Jan from SV Peter Pan couldn’t make it, but Rosie and Sim from SV Alianna – being avid meat eaters and food lovers – didn’t hesitate to come over. The four of us did our best to make a serious dent (and almost finish) the big pot of extraordinary pasta sauce with ten giant meatballs and nine sausages. The salad barely got touched, the fresh bread was a success, three bottles of red wine accompanied the feast and yes, we did serve pasta with the sauce!