Probably Not Papa Tom’s Chicken Spaghetti

Chicken spaghetti is a rich tomato sauce made with a dark roux base and chicken, served over your favorite pasta. This is the richest sauce ever. Delicious!

My maternal great-grandfather, by which I mean my mother’s mother’s father, was a life-long employee of the railroads, the mayor of his small town of Abbeville, LA for a couple of years, the brewer of his own beer and a good cook. His name was Thomas Fleming and we called him Papa Tom.

I don’t remember him really, although I have seen photographs and heard the stories so many times, that I feel I must. But one thing stands out in my mind about him, who knows why these things stick and even if they are accurate, but he used to make spaghetti sauce with chicken and start with a roux.

The family called it chicken spaghetti. Why not tomato sauce with chicken that we happen to serve over noodles? Well, probably because that’s just too long.  

Anyhoo.  That’s what I made for dinner tonight.  Possibly it’s not anything like Papa Tom’s but it was made with him, and my grandmother, Wanda Fleming Gautreaux, and my mother, fondly in mind.

Chicken Spaghetti

Ingredients

1 whole chicken

2 medium onions

7-8 garlic cloves

4 sprigs of rosemary or 3 bay leaves

1 tablespoon of oregano

1 teaspoon of sugar

Olive oil

2 tablespoons butter

Canola oil

1/4 cup  or 30g all-purpose flour

Sea salt

Black pepper

1 can (14 oz) or 390g whole peeled tomatoes with juice

3 oz or 85 grams tomato paste

Method

Cut your chicken into the usual pieces:  Breasts, wings, legs, thighs.  I also cut the breasts into two pieces.  You may choose to do the same.  Season liberally with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Set aside.

Chop your onions and garlic into small pieces.  Pull the rosemary leaves off the stalk and mince.  If you are using bay leaves, leave them whole. 

Drizzle a good amount of olive oil in your pot and add in the two tablespoons of butter.  When it starts to sizzle, add the chicken, a few pieces at a time.  Brown on one side, then the other.  This could take as much as 10 minutes a side.

As the chicken pieces brown, remove them from the pot and set them aside on a plate.  When all the chicken is browned and on the side plate, turn off the pot.  Scrape off the lovely brown bits and heap them on the chicken plate.

Pour the oil from the pan into a heat resistance bowl and allow it to settle.  Wash the pot out thoroughly.

Pour the reserved oil from the bowl into a measuring cup, leaving behind the sediment.  Fill the measuring cup up to the 1/4 cup mark with new Canola oil.  Pour it into your clean pot and add an equal amount (1/4 cup) of flour.

Cook over a medium heat , stirring constantly, until the roux turns a medium dark brown.  Do not let it burn.

Add it the onion, garlic and rosemary or bay leaves.  Give the pot a good stir.

Add in the can of whole peeled tomatoes and the tomato paste. Add in one can’s worth of water.

Put the chicken back in the pot and add enough water to cover.  This took one more can full.

Add a good sprinkle of salt, a good couple of grinds of fresh black pepper and the tablespoon of oregano.  Mix in the teaspoon of sugar and stir.

Bring to the boil and then simmer until the chicken is tender and trying to fall of the bone.  Serve over freshly cooked spaghetti noodles.  This is the richest tomato sauce you'll ever taste.

This cooked down and thickened for about two hours.  Just because we
had nothing better to do.  It was probably cooked and technically ready to
eat in less than 45 minutes, albeit not as thick.

Enjoy!


A P.S. to family members who would like to correct my poor childhood memory, please do!  I will add updates or retractions to this post, as need be.

UPDATE - 11 September 2018: Almost six years after I posted this, I received an email from one of my third cousins. Marty confirmed that his mom Jo Ann also made chicken spaghetti with a roux but that she would never, ever put rosemary in it! I am concluding that Papa Tom probably wouldn't have either. 

Best Spaghetti Sauce with Meatballs

This weekend I am going to visit my grandmother. Yes, you read that correctly, my grandmother. I am 48 years old and I am blessed to have one grandparent still living.  She is full of life and an inspiration to us all. One of her favorite meals is spaghetti and meatballs so I am cooking a good pot to take with us.

Several years back, I made sauce with Italian sausage, removed from the casing and browned and chopped up to look like ground beef, and loved the way it flavored the tomato sauce as it cooked.  Then a couple of years back I watched a Jamie Oliver show where he used sausage but pinched an inch or two out of the casing at a time to make meatballs, which he pan-fried before adding them to the sauce. I thought this was brilliant and, for a time, that was the only way I made meatballs as well. Happily, this coincided with our move from KL to Singapore and Cold Storage in Singapore has wonderful, flavorful fresh sausages in a variety of flavors. To cook with Puy lentils, I would buy the small herb and garlic ones. For spaghetti sauce, the spicy Italian.  Lamb with rosemary worked beautifully for a dinner of mashed potatoes and a vegetable of some sort. Quick, easy, delicious.

Now, of course, you know if you’ve been following along lately that since reading Eating Animals, I try not to buy meat from a regular supermarket (at least not here in Houston because alternatives are readily available) because I cannot know its provenance and how the animal was treated. I would prefer to support the family farmers who raise cows and pigs and chicken out in the pasture, eating what animals should eat, by which I don’t mean antibiotics and other unnatural feed.  Unfortunately that means the selection of sausage is not that great.   So, I was back to making meatballs the old-fashioned way, but trying to mimic the flavor of my beloved sauce with Italian sausage.  

Ingredients

3 lbs or 1360g ground pork, preferably pastured pork

1 oz or 30g hot Italian sausage seasonings (I bought mine from a great supply store off of I-45 at Airline but you can get them online at Penzeys or in their store, also near me. I love the Heights in Houston! If you buy Penzeys, you might want to add cayenne or crushed red pepper since theirs isn’t hot.) 

1 large yellow or white onion

4-5 cloves of garlic

One large 28 oz or 794g can whole peeled tomatoes

One large 12 oz or 340g can of tomato paste – not sauce – paste. The really thick stuff.

2 heaping tablespoons of oregano

2 bay leaves

2 tablespoons of sugar

Method

For the meatballs

Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.

Mix half the seasonings into the pork thoroughly. 

Fry up a small piece to taste. 

Add more seasonings, frying a little piece after each addition. Only you know your family’s taste and you don’t want it too spicy or salty.  That said, some of the seasonings will be transferred when the meatballs cook further in the sauce so don’t panic if you find it suddenly spicier or saltier than you think it should be.

Grease a baking tray with olive oil and drop the meat mixture spoonful by spoonful on the tray. 

With your oily hands, roll each piece into a ball and return to the greased tray.  

When all the balls are rolled, pop the tray into the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Tray one

Tray two

Meanwhile, get started on your sauce.  Chop your onion and garlic and sauté them gently with a little olive oil.  

When they are soft and translucent, add the can of tomatoes (and a can full of water) and the can of paste (and a can of water.)  Add oregano, bay leaves and sugar and bring to a boil.  Turn down to simmer and cover. (Yes, my meatballs are already in for this photo. Truth is, I forgot the oregano and bay leaves and had only added the sugar.  It doesn't really matter if you put them in before or after the meatballs but I thought the instructions should reflect how I MEANT to do it.)

When the meatballs are browned, add them to the sauce pot, making sure to scrape any sticky meaty goodness out of the pan and add it to the pot as well. (Add a little water to the pan if you have to.) Stir gently and cover the pot again. 

Simmer for as long as you can before serving over pasta boiled according to package suggestions. The finished sauce you see here is a little thicker than I would usually serve it but since I am transporting it across state lines, I let it cook down and will add some more water as I reheat it.

All my life, my grandmother has cooked for the family and, like most folks from New Iberia, LA, everything she makes is made with love and spice. She doesn’t cook as much as she used to, although she’ll still fry chicken when begged. (I have watched her and written down her every move but I will be darned if I can replicate her chicken. Hers is still the best!) Every summer I am grateful that Gram is still around and grateful that she can still enjoy some good home cooking.  Preparing one of her favorite meals has given me great joy and it will be even more joyful when we can sit together to share it.  (I’ll add photos after the meal.)

The finished bowl

After note:  The spaghetti and meatballs were a hit!  I could not get a good photo of Gram, despite younger daughter and I both trying with two different cameras.  She does not pose and when we asked her to smile, it reminded us of the Friends where Chandler and Monica were taking engagement photos. Here are a couple anyway.