Jessie Baylin surrounds herself with things that inspire her senses.

The living room of the chic modern tree house of a home that she shares with her husband, Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill, is surrounded with floor-to-ceiling windows that allow stunning views of the neighboring hills and forests. Other walls feature large abstract expressionist-style paintings by local and national artists – and even one local-gone-national, Myles Bennett, a Nashvillian now living in New York.

Thick books about art and photography are stacked on most surfaces, including a variety of earthy wooden occasional chairs. A pile of vintage vinyl records from the ‘70s sits at the foot of the dark stone fireplace mantle beside a contemporary turntable, ready to spin for her listening pleasure. A long, tall farm table on metal casters creates a welcoming space where friends and family gather for home-cooked meals.

Indeed, as lovely as her physical surroundings are, during our visit last week, perhaps the most inspiring thing about the atmosphere chez Jessie was the smell coming from her kitchen – a fresh, savory aroma of garlic and fresh herbs rising a large, lemon-colored Dutch oven that holds the New Jersey native’s family recipe for a classic Italian red sauce.

“I think this sauce tastes best after four or five hours; right now it’s a little young, so everything tastes sweeter,” she explained. “As it cooks, it just keeps getting richer and richer. By six o’clock, this is going to be heaven: you could eat it like soup, really.”

A singer/songwriter by trade, Jessie loves to cook, and does so whenever she can. “We travel a lot, and I’d rather eat in than out when I’m at home,” she said, stirring the thick tomato ragout that she planned to serve at a small dinner party a few hours later.

Jessie admits she’s still getting used to the pace of Nashville, where she moved from Los Angeles a few years ago to be with Nathan. “At first, it bummed me out; Nashville felt so slow,” she said. “But now I appreciate how easy everything is here – like getting groceries. Compared to the schlepping you do in New York, it’s almost fun.”

After being on the road so often over the last few years to support both her own career (her third solo album drops this fall) and that of her husband, Jessie says she’s finally fully embraced the slower pace of southern living. “When I was out running around this morning, I couldn’t wait to get home so I could start working on the sauce,” she said, as a contented smile lit up her face. “Spending the afternoon making sauce feels really good – like I’m winning.”

I’m a restaurant baby. My parents are in the restaurant business in New Jersey, where I’m from. Their original restaurant was Linda’s Fireside Inn; it was my grandparents’ place until my dad took over. Then, he had his own baby restaurant, The Stirling Hotel, which my parents still own. It’s like an old saloon that was dropped in the middle of central New Jersey, off Route 78; it’s right off the train line, which makes it a destination for people coming out from Hoboken and Manhattan. It’s a really special place; I literally grew up there.

They serve upscale tavern food with an Italian flair, and there are anywhere from ten to twenty specials every day. It’s very simple food, which is what we ate at home when I was growing up: simple Italian peasant dishes. Like this sauce I’m making today – it’s one of the things I learned to cook at home.

I messed it up the first time I tried to make it. I was living in Los Angeles, and it was my first dinner party and my first time cooking for people. I should have never done that. I burnt the garlic, which is the one thing I was told absolutely not to do, because it will ruin the dish. It was a big fail.

I knew that it was a wash, but I kept going anyway. I was thinking, “Maybe it won’t really matter. Maybe the garlic won’t destroy it after all.” It did.

I felt bad for the people who came over that night; no one could eat, so we just got really hammered on red wine. I had a beige couch, which ended up having red wine spilled all over it. So in addition to having a failure of a meal, I ended up ruining my couch: from then on, every time I looked at it I was reminded of my ruined sauce.

My dad didn’t really ever teach me to cook. He works so quickly and without recipes that I’d kind of get lost watching him, which made it a hard way to learn. Really, I never joined in until four or five years ago, when I realized I do have a natural ability and that I did learn something from watching him cook for twenty-something years. I finally got the bug.

Most of the women in my family cooked. I’m 75 percent Italian – with a little Welsh thrown in – and my mother’s mother’s family is from a little town in Italy called Montazzoli, which is in Abruzzo. My grandmother Dill was great: about 4’10’’ with blonde hair and blue eyes, and so, so sassy. We gave each other a lot of shit: I was the only who would stand up to her, and she enjoyed that. I still wear her apron when I cook – this little Italian grandmother’s apron covered in flowers.

Dill was an amazing cook, but didn’t enjoy it. But my father’s mother, Mary, who is from a town in Italy called San Bartolomeo, lived and breathed cooking. I think I got a lot of her skills. She was my dad’s biggest inspiration. He grew up from the age of five in the restaurant; he lived above it and was in the bar or in the kitchen from the time he was a baby, because that’s where his parents were.

That’s the thing about owning a restaurant: you have commit to it 100 percent. Plus, you have to be able to do everything. You have to be able to fix the toilet, fix the dishwasher, prepare everything on the menu, and make a perfect Manhattan – all at the same time.

For a long time, my mom and dad did that – they did everything. Now, their business has expanded and they have a staff. I have a younger brother named John who is the assistant manager at the restaurant; my cousin and her boyfriend are the other managers, so it’s all in the family. Every one of my cousins has worked at the restaurant at some point. I was a hostess and a food runner – a horrible food runner, probably the worst ever in the history of food running. But I was a great hostess. To me it was such an accomplishment and an exercise in skill to be able to seat the entire restaurant at the right time, with perfect timing.

I have no desire to have my own restaurant. I think it really is the most intense job there is: you have to live and breathe it all the time or it doesn’t work. You can’t half-ass it in the restaurant business. The commitment level is your soul, basically. I like that about it, but it’s not for me.

I love cooking, but I think there are many pleasures in this life and I want to experience all of them. I think art inspires art; that’s why I’ve filled my house with music that inspires my cooking and paintings and photographs that inspire my music, and vice versa. It’s all connected for me. I couldn’t just commit to do one thing. I want more.

The first thing I do when Nate and I get off the road is make a big pot of this sauce. We eat it for dinner the day I make it and then I have what’s left in the fridge and freeze some as well. It’s great leftover – and I love leftovers: I’m a leftover junkie.

It’s always the heart of the meal, and there are many ways you can prepare it. You can do it plain with pasta or add meat, or you can make a puttanesca, with olives. It’s great for brunch, too: on a poached egg, there’s nothing more perfect. Tonight I’m serving it with spaghetti and chicken meatballs, but I think my favorite thing to do with it is to add mussels and clams and shrimp and serve it up family-style on a huge stainless steel platter. I just load it on and place it in the middle of the table, with a bunch of other stainless steel bowls around where people can toss the shells.

_________________________________Family Red Sauce

Four cans of San Marzano Italian style peeled tomatoes with basil (Centro brand preferred)

One good handful chopped fresh basil

One good handful chopped fresh parley

Six cloves of crushed garlic – smash it with the back of your spoon or knife

Good quality extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup white wine

Sea salt

Fresh ground pepper

Dried oregano

Garlic powder

Empty the cans of tomatoes into a large bowl; with your hands, squeeze, crush and break up the tomatoes till they are at a smooth-ish consistency – take off your rings and really get in there.

Line the bottom of a large pot with olive oil (approx. 1/2 cup, give or take) and put it on medium heat. Once the oil is warm, add your garlic and allow it to become golden brown, but not to burn. (If you burn this, you are screwed: trust me.) This moment is the heart to your sauce. Once the garlic is golden, add the chopped basil and parsley to the pot followed by a healthy shot of white wine. Then add your bowl of hand-crushed tomatoes to the pot and lower heat to simmer. Use salt, pepper, oregano, garlic powder to season your magical Italian potion and stir with wooden spoon. Keep tasting and adding salt/pepper/oregano/garlic powder seasonings to your liking.

I have found in my experience with my own sauce that it really starts to blossom into something rich after being on the stove for around four hours. That’s not to say that after an hour or so it isn’t young and delicious: it’s totally your call.

You can add just about any meat to this sauce: it pairs beautifully with mussels, clams and lobster. I also add hot pepper flakes sometimes for heat or capers and olives for salty goodness.

This recipe serves 8 to 10. The sauce will keep for a few days in the fridge, but you can also freeze it in small Ziploc bags and it will keep for a month or more. There are a hundred ways to use it. I love it for breakfast over eggs of any kind – that actually might be one of my favorite uses for this sauce.

May this basic little gravy bring much love and soul into your home and kitchen. Enjoy, my friend.

-I + W

 

About our photographer: Tec Petaja, who hails from the great land of Michigan, traveled extensively throughout central and eastern Asia, South America and Mexico before finally finding his home in Nashville. It’s here that Tec has been blessed enough to work with some of the fiercest talent and kindest souls around. He consistently shoots his clients with acute attention to detail and a discriminating eye. See his work at www.tecpetaja.com.