Cook’s notes
Sweet sauce? With hotdogs? There’s a historical reason.
Spaghetti arrived in the Philippines via the Americans who brought their own mangled way of cooking the dish. Italy never colonized the Philippines — neither before nor after the fall of Constantinople — and Italian diaspora never reached Southeast Asia.
I know it sounds like a nightmare to Italians but, you know, sweet pasta sauce, well… it’s an acquired taste, I suppose. When you grow up with it, you don’t think it’s strange at all. It doesn’t taste bad. Oh, no, not at all. It’s just… different.
We make our own tomato sauce. If you have to use store-bought, I recommend that you skip the kind sold in pouches as it contains too much starch. Instead, look for passata, the Italian tomato puree.
We don’t add ketchup.
Filipino-style sweet spaghetti with hotdogs
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 400 grams ground beef (14 oz)
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- ⅓ cup finely chopped onion
- ⅓ cup finely chopped canned pimiento
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
- salt
- pepper
- 1 cup tomato sauce
- 3 tablespoons tomato paste mixed with 1 cup bone broth
- 1 tablespoon sugar more if you want the sauce sweeter
- 3 hotdogs (beef frankfurters were used in this recipe) sliced into rings
- 200 grams spaghetti (7 oz) cooked al dente
- grated Parmesan to serve
- chopped parsley to garnish
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil in a pot.
- Add the ground beef. Cook over high heat, breaking up lumps, until lightly browned.
- Add the garlic, onion, pimiento, oregano, paprika and bay leaves to the beef.
- Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.
- Turn the heat down to medium and cook, stirring often, until the onion bits are softened and translucent.
- Pour in the tomato sauce and diluted tomato paste.
- Stir in the sugar. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Add more salt, pepper or sugar, or all of them, to get the balance that you like.
- Stir in the sliced frankfurters. Bring to a gentle boil.
- Set the heat to low, cover the pot and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Give the sauce a final taste and adjust the seasonings, if needed.
- Divide the cooked noodles among bowls.
- Ladle a generous amount of the meaty sauce over them.
- Sprinkle with Parmesan and parsley.
- Serve your Filipino-style sweet spaghetti with hotdogs with toast on the side.
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