Sunday Spaghetti on a Thursday

With just a few days at home I had some real kitchen business to get to right away. I put up a few jars of tomatoes and apples, stocked the shelves and freezer for James to eat while I am gone and took advantage of my day at home with some super slow family style cooking.
One of my favorite hang around the house recipes is an old fashion Neapolitan style ragú -- the kind of Sunday gravy Tony Soprano might favor.
First I use a combination of meats -- something flavorful with bones -- like short ribs (4), shanks (2) or meaty pork ribs (a half rack of baby backs cut horizontally into shorter pieces) combined with stewing veal (not today) or Italian sausage (2 links).
I sear the well seasoned meat (except for the sausage -- that goes in later) along with 1 chopped onion in hot olive oil until it's nice and brown. Then I toss in a couple cloves of chopped garlic and a pinch of dried chili flakes. Traditionally sauce in Naples is either onions or garlic, not both. But I can't resist a little garlic flavor, so that tradition goes out the window in favor of Italian American flavor. Next I pour in about a third of a bottle of red wine and cook everything down until the liquid is just about evaporated.
In goes two large 28 oz cans of crushed tomatoes, the sausage, and today since I've got a big pot going a large can of tomato purée or passata and bring everything up to a simmer. That's it. That's the hardest part. Then it's all over but the waiting. For the next 2-3 hours I stir about every 15 minutes, sometimes skimming a little of the fat off the top if it seems excessive.
The sauce cooks down to a rich meaty red. I toss some with butter, spaghetti, parmesan, and parsley for dinner and offer James the cooked meats as a "secondo." There is always meat left over which I pop in the freezer to grind for ravioli filling, meat pies or Northern Italian style meatballs made with cooked meat, mortadella, and plenty of flavorful breadcrumbs.
A dinner I can feel good about over and over again.

Slow Cooked Sauce

There is something reassuring about sauce bubbling on the stove. Old fashioned long cooking red sauce. The kind New Jersey TV gangsters call gravy and Neopolitans call ragu`.
We belong to a meat CSA and after a couple months I find myself with meats I haven't used -- the packages are usually 1 pound so I end up with 1 pound of country style pork ribs or one pound of short ribs -- not enough to bother roasting or braising alone so I've been saving them for a really killer sauce -- and today is the day.
I started with an idea from Arthur Schwartz's tremendous documentation of Neopolitan cooking,  Naples At Table. Schwartz is not Italian but he has studied the authenticity of Southern Italian cooking like he was born to it and his collection of recipes is as close to having an Italian grandmother in the kitchen as most of us will ever come.
His basic ragu` uses meat with bones, stew meat, an sometimes sausage. Though Schwartz counsels cooks to use onions or garlic, I could not resist and used both.
I started chopped onions (1 1/2) and garlic (3 cloves) sizzling in a pan of hot olive oil. And my own addition a pinch of chile flakes. When the onions started to soften I added in pork ribs, beef short ribs, and chunks of stew meat. I let the meat brown for a good 10 minutes and then poured in about 3/4 cup of red wine. When the wine had nearly evaporated I poured in 3 large cans of crushed tomatoes a good pinch of salt and 4 links of Italian sausage (2 spicy -- another inauthentic touch -- 2 sweet). The sauce slowly bubbled on the stove for about 3 hours, The sausage poached in the sauce. And the bones offered their hearty flavor through the dish.
In the end we had a silky rich red sauce (topped with sausage slices) and and as they do in Naples cooked meats ready for dinners later in the week.

Meatballs

Time had come for the last tomatoes ripening on my kitchen windowsill. All of them far from pageant winners, sauce came to mind. I cooked down those roughly chopped tomatoes with 3/4 cup of wine (I usually prefer red but we had white open and waiting), 1 cup of olive oil, 8 smashed cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, oregano, dried parsley, chile flakes, dried basil ( could had eased fresh but out's cold up here and the plants are long gone), and 4 bay leaves. Mashing the tomatoes a little the mixture simmered for nearly 2 hours. Taking the lazy girl's way out -- instead of peeling the tomatoes at the beginning or passing through a food mill at the end -- I gave the whole melange a turn in the vitamix and -- presto! smooth sauce. This is the recipe I use when canning sauce to use through the year in quick dishes and other recipes, my basic sauce. Probably due to sad end of year tomatoes and maybe the white wine, the sauce was a bit more acidic then usual, so today I warmed the sauce with a bit of whole milk (about 1 cup leftover in the fridge) and dropped in simple panfried meatballs (ground beef, ground pork, chopped onion, chopped garlic, 2 eggs, gluten free bread crumbs, dried parsley, oregano, tiny bit of grated parmesan) to cook through in the savory goodness.
Despite the one day biscuit and pie vacation for Thanksgiving we are still in the midst of our gluten free experiment around here so these meatballs topped a bowl of beautiful steamed Romanesco cauliflower.

One Last Project Before I Go

I came home to a rainbow of tomatoes waiting, some just ready (above) and some a little past ready. I hate to let anything go to waste, especially not my beautiful homegrown tomatoes. I could have canned up jars for winter (I usually do a dozen jars or so --we're not big canned tomato eaters -- each summer)  but inside today I was dreading all that blanching and peeling.
Last year I put up a few jars of sauce and they came in handy over and over again adding flavor to soups and stews and braises and sauces. I decided on an easy cook batch of Sicilian style tomato sauce.

First I chopped up my beautiful tomatoes, not too small just enough to get them all into the pot. I added in dried parsley and basil along with oregano, crushed red peppers and 4 bay leaves, then sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme. Usually when I can sauce I make a less herby more basic version but today a little extra flavor felt right. I poured in 1 cup of olive oil and 3/4 cup of red wine and brought everything to a boil, pressing down the  tomatoes slightly to start them breaking down.  The pot simmered for 2 1/2 hours until I could see a thick sauce forming. I removed the rosemary, thyme, and bay leaves then passed the remaining sauce through a food mill to separate the tomato skins and seeds.

I was feeling pretty lazy by the time my sauce was ready to jar. I thought about just pouring some into freezer containers and tucking them away. But my sauce was so thick and beautiful (and tasty), I knew I would miss seeing the filled jars on the pantry shelf and hearing the satisfying thunk of a hot jar's seal setting. Out came the canning pot.

I processed the jars for about 10 minutes, wiped them clean and tucked them away for future meals. I had just a bit of sauce left in the pot with dinnertime on the way. I started a pot with olive oil, garlic, onions, and finely chopped peppers (there were fresh ones calling my name in the garden). As the aromatics sautéed I mixed up some easy meatballs. Ground pork and beef, eggs, breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, chopped garlic, chopped shallots, basil, parsley, oregano, S&P and crushed red peppers, rolled around fresh cubes of mozzarella. A plain meatball with a surprise. I browned the meatballs in the pot with the onion mixture, poured in a little red wine and the leftover sauce and let everything simmer for about 30 minutes. The sauce was thick and rich and meaty. Just right for a cool fall evening. A perfect last meal at home (for a while).

Eggs Poached In Tomato Sauce

The internet recipe I found said this dish is a favorite in Israel. Shakshuka is very much like "eggs in purgatory" favored by the Italians (and me) but with the addition of chick peas and feta cheese -- two of my favorite ingredients and foods. Basically you start the dish by making a spicy tomato sauce. Onions, garlic an a chopped jalapeno go into a pan of olive oil to sauté for about 8 minutes. Those aromatics are followed by a drained can of chick peas, paprika and cumin and another 2 minutes of sautéing. Next you add in a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes with their juice and let the pan simmer for 15 minutes. Dot the sauce with crumbled feta cheese and nestle 6 - 8 eggs into the sauce before popping the frying pan into a 425º over for about 8 minutes. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro before serving with warm bread.

Ad Hoc Dinner: Tomato Sauce Challenge Part One

Yet another adventure with Thomas Keller.

I know I've mentioned it -- but this year James, although he couldn't wait for Christmas, gave me Thomas Keller's new Ad Hoc cookbook. At Ad Hoc Keller serves offers one appetizer, one entree, a cheese course, and one dessert a night. Chef Keller's version of what we home cooks do every day or would if we could.

When I saw the recipe for oven-roasted tomato sauce I had to give it a try (especially since there is a similar Mark Peel recipe to challenge it), in spite of the more than two hours cooking time. I roasted aromatic vegetables (leeks, onions, fennel and garlic) with salt and canola oil for 45 minutes. Then I stirred in brown sugar and red wine vinegar and allowed the mixture to roast for 20 more minutes. When the vegetables were tender and caramelized I stirred in two large drained cans of San Marzano tomatoes -- 1 can chopped, 1 left whole -- and a sachet of bay leaf, thyme, peppercorns and garlic -- and allowed the mixture to roast at 350º for an hour and a half more stirring every 30 minutes. When I tasted the sauce I thought it was a bit too sweet but chef Keller writes that the sauce goes well with polenta or meatballs. I decided to try them both.

The meatballs -- if you ignore the mix of meats (pork, sirloin, chuck, and veal -- I used turkey) are pretty straight forward. I sautéed onions and garlic until just tender but not browned. Let that cool and add to the meat mixture along with 1 egg, q/4 cup bread crumbs, chopped parsley, and S&P. The twist comes in the cooking. After forming the nearly baseball sized meatballs around a cube of fresh mozzarella I baked them on a rack for 20 minutes until just cooked through. Mini-hamburger maybe but pretty darned good.

The trouble came with the polenta. This wasn't my first polenta by any means, but Keller's method was new to me. His instructions told me to bring chicken broth to a boil and pour the polenta in a fine stream while stirring -- usual so far. But then, Keller says to cook out all the moisture (about 20 minutes) until the polenta is quite dry before adding an absurd, by any one else's standards, amount of butter and cream -- warning that the polenta could be gooey if not fully dry before adding the fat. Well maybe I need pictures, or further instruction. Our polenta was tasty but the texture . . . all wrong.

Hmm maybe I need some personal instruction -- Chef Keller . . . I'm available.