From a file folder: Coppola/“Godfather” sauce

[From The Village Voice. Date unknown.]

I clipped the recipe many years ago and forgot all about it. This sauce is ridiculously easy to make and tastes plenty good, though it’s not nearly as varied in its flavors as a more elaborate sauce I’ve been making for the last four years.

After figuring out what a no. 303 can is — and deciding it would be much too small, I went with a twenty-eight-ounce can of Cento tomato puree. That turned out to be perfect for a box of pasta. I used most of a head of garlic and a lot of basil. (The unchopped leaves loosely filled an eight-ounce container.)

Elaine thought this sauce was better the first time around. I liked it equally well across two meals. But the basil did lose some of its zing over time. Maybe things would have been different earlier in the season: our basil plant is on the wane.

The IMDb lists a Bill Poplar who worked on Apocalypse Now (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1979). I think it likely that this letter is his.

From this same file folder
The Art Ensemble of Chicago in Boston
Jim Doyle on education
A Meeting with Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tile-pilfering questionnaire

[As “Vladimir Estragon,” Geoffrey Stokes wrote a column on food for The Voice, “Waiting for Dessert.” Was pasta ever a “thing,” a craze? Must have been.]