Tagliatelle con Ragu alla Bolognese

Baby cut to the chase on this one, as we wanted to make Bolognese sauce with tagliatelle pasta for our guests but didn't have the luxury of over four hours to patiently labor over a gently simmering ragu. We did make the pasta, however. The process is very simple really when abetted by a KitchenAid mixer pasta attachment. We called our guests into the kitchen and all of us had a hand at making our own tagliatelle. It was quite fun! Otherwise buy fresh pasta to further save time and effort. But back to the sauce: we turned up the heat and fiercely cooked it down, evaporating much of the liquid, and the whole thing was ready in a little over an hour. Just lower the heat when adding in the milk. And so, we served a most delicious, fragrant and handsome short-version Ragu alla Bolognese!

Tagliatelle con Ragu alla Bolognese
Adapted from La Cucina Italiana
Ingredients
For the sauce:1 (14-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes in juice, preferably San Marzano
1 1/2 to 2 1/2 cups water
1 tablespoon tomato paste, preferably double concentrated
1 beef bouillon cube
1 celery rib, roughly chopped
1/2 medium onion, roughly chopped
1/2 medium carrot, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 ounces sweet Italian sausage, removed from casing
2 ounces pancetta or slab bacon, finely chopped
3/4 pound ground beef (not lean)
3/4 pound ground pork
1/2 pound ground veal
Fine sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup dry red wine
1 bay leaf
3/4 cup whole milk
Freshly grated nutmeg

For serving:Fresh tagliatelle, or other pasta, cooked until tender in salted water
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Method
Purée tomatoes and their juice in blender until smooth; set aside.
In a small saucepan, bring 1 1/2 cups water to a simmer; whisk in tomato paste and beef base. Remove from heat; set aside.
Make a battuto (the foundation for many Italian soups, stews and sauces) by finely chopping together (by hand) celery, onion and carrot.
Heat butter over medium-low heat until melted and foaming; add battuto, sausage and pancetta. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until sausage is broken into small bits, then continue cooking, stirring frequently, until vegetables are softened (do not brown), about 25 minutes.
Add beef, pork and veal; increase heat to medium. Cook, stirring until meat is broken into small bits, then season lightly with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring constantly for 10 minutes more (do not brown).
Add wine; bring to a boil and cook until wine and juices in pot are mostly evaporated, 3 to 5 minutes. Add reserved puréed tomato, reserved beef base mixture and bay leaf.
Cook ragù at the barest simmer, stirring occasionally (making sure to stir into edges of pot), until meat is very tender and sauce is thick (as sauce thickens, add water, bit by bit, if necessary, to keep sauce moist and just barely liquid), about
2 1/2 hours.
Add milk and continue cooking for 30 minutes more. Stir in pinch nutmeg. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

To serve
Toss the ragù with pasta using 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups of sauce per pound of pasta. Serve immediately with cheese.

Photo Credit: G. Giraldo

The Sole Series - Part Two, Lemon Sole

I have to admit my first stab at Sole Meuniere was a real lemon, at least to me, and it shouldn't have been: the recipe is not terribly difficult. Honestly, it appeared I was the only one who didn't like it so much. Our guests raved and ate it all; I just knew it wasn't that classic, single dish that stirred Julia Child's soul and launched her interest and subsequent career in mastering the art of French cooking when she first tasted it, in 50's France. Now, I wasn't trying for such transcendence here, I was just trying for something good, unique, and if nothing else, at least properly prepared!

At the most basic level, sole is absolutely delicious, probably whatever you do to it. So that's where I was lucky. My mistake was stupid and stemmed from haste and perhaps even nervousness to prepare a meal that Baby's co-workers (some of whom I had never met) would really enjoy. We had about ten filets and I dipped them in egg, then dredged them in flour. I then stacked them and went about other business when they just should have gone in the buttery frying pan, one at a time, as I dipped and dredged. Instead they just sat there on the plate for only a little while but that's all it took for the flour to become gummy. As I tossed them into the pan, I frantically sprinkled more flour, flipped and carried on with the rest. I guess that saved it in a way, and now I know what to do next time, but I was still (inwardly) disappointed. The sole is finished in a simple lemon and parsley sauce.

Moving on. We wanted to have shrimp for our appetizer, but as good as shrimp cocktail is, it almost seems cliched and a little lax with hardly any effort behind it. I thought of using something other than cocktail sauce but then turned to the idea of gazpacho in cappucino cups served with poached shrimp. Better, but somehow it didn't seem right to start off with. Then I thought of a cold pea soup recipe with mint that I used to make. Better still and more in keeping with the rest of the menu I had planned! I first grilled the shrimp, poached them in pork stock, chilled everything and served our Minty Pea Cappucinos with the shrimp on bamboo skewers tucked inside.

So, for the main dishes (and yes, I'm afraid there's still more to report about the Sole Meuniere) I thought to combine cultural influences (sorry, I sort of ache at the word fusion) and top the fish with sauteed leeks and squash blossoms inspired by the Sole with Zucchini Blossoms recipe I read about in La Cucina Italiana magazine. The leeks were a nice addition surely, but the frozen and stuffed breaded blossoms I had purchased in error turned to a mushy mess when I attempted to sautee them and more so, when in a panic, fried them afterward. They should have just been baked I think. Really I should have bought fresh, as in the recipe from La Cucina Italiana. Thankfully, nobody saw them at all or the act of my throwing them out! Anyway, at least they were inexpensive. The big slab of Filet Mignon came out perfectly medium-rare, in a delicious red wine reduction. I also made a summer favorite, from Saveur magazine that I've been making for about a hundred years now--Trenette col Pesto Genovese, Linguine with Pesto, with potatoes and string beans. It's such a good dish, single-handedly takes care of starch and vegetable sides, and goes very well with either meat or fish, or in this case, both.

La Tur cheese carries the moniker of being the "ice cream of cheeses" and after one luscious, extraordinary bite, I'm sure you'll agree. Seemed like a good idea for dessert. We also got the old girolle out (I wrote a post about it back in May) and spun frilly slices of Tetes de Moine (translating to monk's head) cheese. We put some blanched almonds and dried apricots out and filled an egg cup with quince paste to round out our cheese plate.

Oh and P.S. if a dish really doesn't come out well, then just start plying your guests with a lot of wine. Or order pizza. At least you tried.

Soundtrack: Henry Mancini, Martinis with Mancini; Antonio Carlos Jobim, The Man From Ipanema, Disc 2; Stephane Grappelli, Shades of Django; Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Everybody's Boppin'; Frances Faye, No Reservations

A Little Lasagna Lunch

None of us could decide where to meet up before going to an early evening concert over the weekend on the far side of town (although I won't tell you what concert it was, I will admit that it was a regrettable, crashing bore), so Baby and I suggested our friends come over to the apartment first, while we served drinks and made a late, little lasagna lunch! How were we to know that we should have all just stayed in, snacked on more lasagnette, found more wine and played a rousing game of Philadelphia Rummy?

I had been itching to make the gorgeous Little Lasagnas with Tomato, Burrata and Pesto that graced the cover of the June issue of the fantastic La Cucina Italiana magazine, which I always pick up at Buon Italia (a fine purveyor of the best, imported Italian foodstuffs) in the nearby Chelsea Market.

Baby and I hit the Market before noon, intending to plunder Buon Italia of their meats and cheeses, but the rest of Chelsea and beyond had beat us to much of it! We had never intended to make our own pasta as we often rely on the easier, fresh sheets of it that we can cut to our liking--but they were sold out. After some rooting around, I did find frozen sheets that managed to work out quite well. The extraordinary burrata had also vanished, the beasts! Circling burrata buzzards probably descend as soon as the doors open. But that's not so surprising: after trying this mozzarella cheese with an oozing buttery cream and mozzarella interior just once, there's no turning back. We purchased stracciatella instead to sub for our burrata; we felt its similarly creamy consistency could pinch-hit.

I grabbed a 28-oz can of chopped Valle tomatoes for the sauce, since we were limited on time, and as I'm always loathe to blanche, peel and chop vine-ripened tomatoes anyway. Italy's vibrant San Marzano tomatoes always work out to my taste. We found some walnuts, pine nuts and Parmigiano-Reggiano for our pesto, ordered a quarter pound of speck (smoked proscuitto) from the meat counter, and picked up a package of grissini (elegant, elongated bread straws) for appetizers. We paid and high-tailed it out of the bustling Buon Italia!

Manhattan Fruit Exchange in the Market usually has great produce, but the basil was lacking this trip, with brown spots, although it was good and fragrant enough to use in the pesto that our recipe required. Onions and garlic were for our tomato sauce.

As we had fresh pasta, we found ourselves with extra time and made the pesto first, as it needs an hour to chill. I'd made pesto before many times but the interesting inclusion of a little effervescent club soda was good news to me.

We found more time by using our can of San Marzano tomatoes, already chopped. It was added to the mix of oil, butter, onion and garlic with double concentrated tomato paste (available at Whole Foods) and a few basil leaves. I also added a little sugar, which I find sweetly perks up any tomato sauce.

The sheets of frozen pasta thawed on the countertop as we busied ourselves with the filling of pesto, sauce, stracchiatella and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Cutting the pasta sheets in half, they were larger than the 4 " x 4" serving that the recipe suggests--but the edges crisped just the same in the oven and there was that much more to enjoy!

When our guests arrived, we had already juiced a yellow watermelon for cocktails with Leblon cachaca, a natural sugar cane liquor, muddled with mint, limes and sugar. Once we sat down to eat, we put a slightly chilled, fine bottle of Pepperwood Grove Pinot Noir on the table.

A simple salad of shredded red and green leaf lettuces was tossed tableside with fresh lemon juice, olive oil, finely ground Darling Buds sea salt perfumed with rose petals, and freshly cracked pepper. As we'd brought back a glut of chocolate from our recent trip to Switzerland, for dessert we unwrapped a Frey bar with the most fascinating crystalized chocolate filled with boozy Poire William pear liquor.

After such a nice lunch, no wonder the concert we slogged our way to in the rain was disappointing!