dinner

There and Back Again: My Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese

maki — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:00:24 +0200

I love pasta in many guises, but when it comes to ultimate Comfort Pasta, there is nothing that compares to a spaghetti bolognese. By spaghetti bolognese, I mean spaghetti topped with a rich, ground-meat and tomato based sauce. No fancy ragu or such. I don’t think it’s that authentically Italian, but I don’t really care. It’s one of my favorite cool-weather dinners.

Once upon a time, I had what I thought was a perfect recipe for spaghetti bolognese. Then, about a year ago I lost my way. After a year of bewilderingly off-target bolognese, I’ve found my way back.

I blame Heston Blumenthal for messing with my head. (Disclaimer: I am otherwise a big fan of Mr. Blumenthal.) Last year, he tackled spaghetti bolognese on his In Search of Perfection television series (and in the book of course), and came up with a “perfect” version. The perfect Blumenthal version of spaghetti bolognese is, naturally, extremely complicated, but compared to the other “perfect” versions of various popular dishes it seemed to be the most doable. So, we (note the plural: it required a team effort) tackled it, piece by piece. It does help in life to have an almost equally food-obsessive partner for such quests.

It took us 3 full days to accomplish, starting from the pre-ordering of the meaty oxtails at the butcher counter (it’s not a commonly used cut here), finding the perfect spaghetti, ripe tomatoes in December (yes, I know) and the final slow cooking of the sauce. And the result?

It was good, yes, but perfect? Neither of us was sure. But yet it had flashes of something great in there; the meatiness of the gelatinous oxtail, the unctuous richness. So, we embarked on a long journey of trying to tweak that recipe. We tried different meat combinations. (Turkey is a definite no.) We experimented with bacon, chorizo, various sausages, salami. We tried less or more of the vegetables, canned tomatoes alone or fresh alone.

All were interesting, but I still felt off kilter. Then, the other day I made bolognese more or the way I had made it for years until the Blumenthal experiments - and, it was just about perfect.

Mind you, it’s probably because my criteria for a perfect bolognese are different from the great chef’s, as I explain below. And some of the ideas gleaned from the Blumenthal version and the ensuing experiments did creep in, making the sauce even better. In any case, I’m now happy that this is my Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese. I can now move on to perfecting other things.

Defining my Perfect Bolognese

I prefer my bolognese to have a rich, deep taste of tomato, wine, and meat. I also like the meat to be ground quite finely so that you get an integrated ‘meat sauce’, rather than ‘bits of meat suspended in a sauce’.

The experiments with cured meats convinced me that I don’t like cured-meat flavor or smoke flavor in the sauce, but a little bacon is added for richness.

I like the sauce to be rich, but not swimming in fat (a pronounced feature of the Blumenthal version).

It’s key to let the sauce cook for a very long time - minimum 3 hours after the preparatory stage - in a thick-walled pan, ideally a Le Creuset or similar.

The only pasta to use is a robust, dried spaghetti. The kind we use all the time now is substantial and rough textured, as you can see from the picture. That rough surface absorbs sauce in a very satisfying way. It costs almost twice as much as Barilla spaghetti, but is worth it. (If you are using Barilla or other mass-produced line though, I’d go for the spaghettoni rather than spaghetti.)

(For readers in Switzerland, this is the Spaghetti alla chitarra from the Migros Selection line.)

Things I liked and didn’t like about the Blumenthal version

The Heston Blumenthal bolognese is described in great detail in his first book, but also appears on this page. There’s another one on The Times web site, which is quite different.

Mixing fresh and canned tomato is a great idea, as is adding some cream - though I used butter instead, for that dairy unctuousness.

Long cooking, of course, is a good thing, though his version takes 9 hours.

The oxtail meat idea was interesting, but obtaining and then cutting the meat off the fiddly bones is way, way too much work - and ultimately, I felt, not quite worth it. It’s also quite expensive here in Switzerland. For the gelatinous quality I use some veal in the meat mixture instead.

His version was too sweet for me for some reason. I also didn’t like the star anise addition at all - this may have added to that sweet flavor somehow. I do like adding star anise to many meat dishes, especially pork, just not this one.

There was also too much added fat overall, which cause a very substantial oil slick to appear on the surface of the sauce.

I’ve always used red wine in bolognese, and he used an ‘oaky Chardonnay’. I prefer the robust red wine.

Recipe: My Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese

For the sauce:

The meats:

450-500g / 1 lb top loin or chuck
225-250g / 8 oz veal breast
225-250g / 8 oz. pork shoulder
100g / 3 oz non-smoked bacon or pancetta or speck, chopped fine

(Note that the beef and pork should be rather marbled, not very lean, if you need to use other cuts.)

Have all of the meats (except the bacon, which you’ll chop yourself) twice ground by the butcher, or grind it yourself (use a grinder or a food processor) until fairly fine but not a paste. If using a food processor, it helps to cube the meat and then half-freeze the cubes first. You can buy already ground meat if you prefer, but it should be not too lean as well.

The vegetables:

2 cups finely chopped onion
2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 cup finely chopped celery
1 cup finely chopped carrot

Other stuff:

About 1/4 cup light olive oil
1 cup (250ml) red wine such as a Barbera or a Côte du Rhone (but I usually use whatever is handy, as long as it’s robust it’s fine)
1 large can (800g) canned tomatoes, the tomatoes smashed up (do this with your hands or in the food processor)
2 Tbs. tomato paste
4 cups peeled and chopped fresh tomatoes, seeds and all (If in the dead of winter, use another can of canned tomatoes instead)
2 bay leaves
Crushed dried or (preferably) fresh chopped rosemary leaves
Dried thyme
Dried oregano
Grated nutmeg
About 2 Tbs. butter, more or less to taste
Stock (veal or beef preferred) or water
Salt and pepper

And…the pasta etc.:

Spaghetti or spaghettoni, cooked al dente
Butter to toss with the spaghetti
Freshly grated Parmesano Reggiano (freshly grated Grana Padano is acceptable)

Equipment needed:

a heavy pan - I use an enamelled cast iron pot
large frying pan or sauté pan
Recommended to have: a food processor.

Heat up the olive oil in the heavy pot over medium heat. Toss in all the chopped up vegetables, then lower the heat to about midway between low and medium. Sauté the vegetables over the low heat, stirring occasionally, until it’s limp and very lightly tan.

In a large frying pan, sauté the ground meats until browned, and add it all into the pot. Deglaze (add a bit of the stock or water to the hot pan, scrape off the bits ) the frying pan and add that to the pot too.

Add all the other ingredients except the butter, water and salt and pepper. (The amount of herbs you add really depends on your taste. I like to add quite a bit of chopped fresh rosemary, about 2 tablespoons, because I have childhood memories of happily chewing on bits of rosemary leaves in my mother’s spaghetti bolognese. Add about a teaspoonful of the herbs and several grindings of the nutmeg, then taste after a few hours to see if you want more.)

Bring up the temperature until it’s bubbling, then lower the heat to ‘low’ and simmer, stirring up from the bottom of the pot occasionally, for at least 3 hours, preferably 4 or longer. Add a little stock or water whenever it starts to dry out too much. (You may also do this in the oven, but I prefer to do it on the rangetop and have just a tiny hint of burnt flavor in there.)

At the end of the cooking process, take out the bay leaves, stir in the butter, and add salt and pepper to taste.

This makes a lot of very rich sauce. About 1/2 cup is enough I think for a plate of dinner-portion spaghetti (allowing about 100g or 3 1/2 ounces dry weight per person). Portion and freeze the rest - it freezes beautifully.

To enhance the flavor, toss the freshly cooked spaghetti with a knob of butter prior to ladling on the sauce. Optionally top with freshly grated Parmesano Reggiano, or Grana Padano.

The only thing to serve with this is a green salad with a sharp vinegarette.

Notes

While the oil slick on this sauce is not as pronounced as the one that appears on the Blumenthal version, it is impressively deep. You can scoop some of this off if it scares you. (I would scoop off the excess oil prior to adding the butter…which may seem illogical, but you’ll be taking out ‘other’ oils and adding in butter flavor.)

You can also ‘stretch’ the sauce by taking a cupful and adding 1 small can (400g - about 8 oz) of crushed canned tomatoes. Adjust the salt and pepper. Sometimes I prefer this less-rich version.

Or, you can add one cupful to 1 cup of cream…for a very rich creamy sauce indeed.

Adding some sauteed mushrooms enhances it too.

The sauce as-is is perfect for layering in lasagna, stuffing cannellini and such, paired with a perfect Bechamel.

Don’t ruin it by covering it with pre-powdered cardboard ‘parmesan’. If there’s one thing I’ve learned while living in Switerland it’s that mystery cheese products taste really, really bad compared to the real thing.

Finally, in case you are wondering, spaghetti bolognese (also known as ‘spaghetti meat sauce’) is very popular in Japan. It has to be one of the most universally loved dishes in the world, no?

(Somewhat different and lighter pasta.)

IMBB 24: Sweet and Sour Okara Meatballs with Bittersweet Vegetables In Under 30 Minutes

maki — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 19:11:49 +0100

I've promised an article on what to do with okara, the fiber-rich fluffy byproduct of making soy milk or tofu. This is not it. But I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and show one way of using okara in everyday cooking, in a dish that can be made in under 30 minutes, making it suitable for Is My Blog Burning edition 24 hosted by Too Many Chefs.

These meatballs are very light and soft, thanks to the okara, tofu and chopped shiitake mushrooms. They are deep fried because the meatball mixture is so soft, and trying to stir-fry them makes them fall apart. The oil is very well drained off and they only have a light coating of cornstarch, so they aren't greasy at all. The very simple to make sweet and sour sauce finishes them off, but if you like the crispy texture of the freshly-fried meatballs you can have them just like that too and serve the sauce separately for dipping.

Accompanying the meatballs is a simple vegetable stir fry of the flowers of my new vegetable discovery, catalogna or puntarelle, and slim Asian style eggplants (aubergines). Puntarelle flowers have a mild bitterness and a crunchy texture that I find very addictive, which is balanced nicely by the soft, creamy texture of the eggplant.

This dish plus some plain white rice makes a quick and very tasty dinner. Chopping the vegetables and whizzing up the meatball mix in a food processor does help to speed up things, but you can do it by hand too. The key to making all of this within 30 minutes is to prepare all the vegetables first, heat the oil while mixing up the meatball mix, and to do the stir-fry while frying the meatballs. It gets a bit hectic but can be done. As for the rice...I have a rice cooker which really helps, otherwise you can cheat and use an instant type rice. (You can cook rice on the stove at the same time too, provided you have at least 4 burners on your cooktop. Just put the rice on at the start of your 30 minutes.)

The flavors in this dinner are a sort of Japanese-dominant Asian Fusion. I love this kind of food. This will serve 4 people.

Sweet and Sour Okara Meatballs

For the meatballs:

450g / 1 lb. ground pork, or ground chuck
1 cup fresh or de-frosted moist okara, or about 1/2 cup of dried okara (available from some Japanese food stores) plus enough water to moisten it
1/2 cup crumbled firm tofu
6 medium sized fresh shiitake mushrooms
3 green onions
1 piece fresh ginger
1 Tbs tahini (sesame paste) or peanut butter
2 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs miso
1/2 tsp salt
Several grinds of pepper
1 egg
Cornstarch
Peanut oil or safflower oil for frying

For the sweet and sour sauce:

5 Tbs rice vinegar
3 Tbs sugar
2 Tbs miso
2 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs chinese rice wine (Shaoxing) or sake or sherry
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
2 pickled plums (umeboshi; available from Japanese or Asian food stores), de-seeded and mashed up
1 1/2 Tbs. cornstarch dissolved in 1 cup of cold water

Start heating the oil for frying. (A dedicated deep fryer helps, but I just use a deepish pot.)

Chop the shiitake mushrooms and green onion finely, reserving a little bit of the green onion for using as garnish later. Peel and grate the ginger.

Mix all the meatball ingredients together in a bowl except for the cornstarch. The mixture will be quite soft due to the okara. Form into balls with wet hands, and coat with the cornstarch.

Drop the meatballs in batches into the hot oil, and fry until they are a deep golden brown on all sides. Drain well on paper towels.

In the meantime, make the sweet and sour sauce. Combine all the ingredients in a small pan over medium heat, and mix. If you can't get the umeboshi just omit them - it will still be good. Add more red pepper flakes if you want it to be real spicy. Cook the sauce until it's clear and a bit thickened.

Toss the hot meatballs together with the sauce, and garnish with the reserved chopped green onions.

Note: if you can't get a hold of okara, use 1 cup of fresh white breadcrumbs instead. The texture won't be the same, but it will still be good.

Puntarelle Flower and Eggplant Stir Fry

Flower buds from one puntarelle
4 slim Asian eggplants (a lot of regular supermarkets sell these now, or try Asian or Indian groceries)
3 cloves of garlic
Peanut oil for stir-frying
Salt and pepper

Cut out the flower buds from the puntarelle, reserving the leaves for a salad. Cut off the step part of the flower buds if they are woody. Slice the flower buds lengthwise in quarters.

Slice the eggplant lengthwise, so they are more or less the same thickness as the sliced puntarelle flower buds.

Chop the garlic.

Heat up a wok or sauté pan with a little peanut oil. Toss in the garlic, then the puntarelle. Stir around until the punetarelle turn a bit limp, then toss in the eggplant. Stir fry over the highest heat you can manage until the eggplant is limp. The puntarelle should be crisp-tender. Season with salt and pepper.

Note: If you can't find puntarelle, you can use green asparagus instead.

Happy Valentine's Day!

maki — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 17:10:12 +0100

Will you be staying in or going out for dinner tonight? If you are staying in, the best Valentine's Day present may be a meal cooked by the partner in your relationship that doesn't normally do the cooking.

Here are some easy to prepare yet impressing looking - and of course, delicious - dishes from the archives of Just Hungry:

For starters, nothing is as warming as soup. Soup can also be made in advance, leaving you free to tackle the rest of the meal. A simple yet very attractive way to present an intensely flavored soup that is used by restaurants is to serve it in a demitasse - a small espresso cup, or a tea cup. The spoon should be small, to match the receptacle. Two soups that have a touch of heat in them to get you going are:

Really Asian Fusion Soup, which is a combination of the sweetness of coconut milk, the salty-sweetness of white miso, and the sourness of lime and fresh ginger. You can omit the fish and fish sauce to make it vegetarian.
Carrot-Ginger-Orange Soup also has those hot-spicy yet sweet undertones.
If you would prefer a starter that is not soup, how about Grilled asparagus with balsamic vinegar? This is so delicous you could make it a main dish. They do say asparagus is an aphrodesiac...

For the main course you want to serve something that looks extra-special, but is easy and fairly foolproof. Go for something that cooks very quickly, and watch the pan until it's all done. Don't worry, these dishes cook in 20 to 30 minutes. (The exception is he handrolled sushi - unless you have a rice cooker, then it's just a matter of assembling the ingredients you want to roll.)

Saltimbocca and Risotto Milanese. Risotto is surprisingly easy - just have the stock you're adding hot before adding, and keep stirring and adding the liquid to the rice. The saltimbocca are dead easy to make yet very pretty.
Chicken Karaage - Japanese-style bite-sized fried chicken nuggets flavored with soy sauce, ginger and sake is very light and more-ish. You could serve this perhaps with the sweet-and-sour and totally fat free Scandinavian cucumber salad.
Or, maybe you prefer something like Baby lamb chops with stove-top Pommes Anna. Baby-sized food is so much prettier than the full-sized kind.
If you want to an interactively fun meal, try assembling the ingredients for Hand rolled sushi. The ingredients can be all-vegetarian (avocado, cucumber, pickles, etc) if you wish.
Really pressed for time? Buy some handmade fresh ravioli (perhaps stuffed with ingredients you've never tried, like wild mushrooms or pumpkin), and serve them with a little herbed butter: just chop up your favorite fresh herb (thyme, parsley, sage and rosemary all work) and sauté it briefly in butter; pour the butter over the cooked ravioli, and toss about a bit in the hot pan. Yummy.

As for dessert - you may choose to make something of course (just look through the chocolate index for some ideas... handmade dark chocolate peanut butter cups perhaps?) but there's no better end to a perfect romantic meal than some chocolate pralines or truffles, with espresso or tea. And it's one less thing to worry about so you can relax and cuddle for the rest of the evening. (And, if you don't have a sweetie to cuddle with this year, the next best thing is a nice box of chocolates!)

It's The Season For Shepherd's Pie

maki — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:40:33 +0100

Having spent some of my growing-up years in England, I have a special place in my heart for shepherd's pie, otherwise known as cottage pie. It's definitely winter food though, because nothing is as warming as piping hot shepherd's pie straight out of the oven.

It combines two of my favorite ingredients, well-seasoned ground beef and mashed potatoes. Actually I believe that originally the ground meat was lamb, but in our house lamb was a no-no since my father had a morbid dislike of it. (One famous family story is when he was invited to dinner when we were living in England. He took a mouthful of the roast he was served, and asked his hostess what it was. She said it was lamb, and he promptly and spectacularly threw up.) I don't mind lamb myself but some family traditions are sacred: beef it is for shepherd's pie.

I've made the ground beef part with a lot of variations over the years, but I've settled on this formula as being the most tasty. The key to its tastiness is the slowly sautéed mushroom mixture, which is (when made with butter rather than oil, though it's good even if you use healthier olive oil) a standard in classical French cooking called duxelles. Classic duxelles does not use celery but I like to add a small piece of celery nevertheless.

You can make the beef part in advance, and even freeze it, which makes it a nice easy-assembly dinner; but whatever you do please use freshly made mashed potatoes. Below I reveal how I make my mash.

Shepherd's Pie

500g, or about 1 lb, not-too-lean ground beef
250g, or about 1/2 pound or 1 packet, mushrooms
1 medium onion
1 piece celery stalk
1-2 garlic cloves
4-6 (depending on size) creamy potatoes. Here I prefer Bintje potatoes, in the U.S. I would use Yukon Gold
Whole Milk
Worcestershire Sauce
About 1 cup vegetable or beef stock (water + stock cube is fine)
Salt, pepper and dried thyme

Preheat the oven to about 200°C / 400°F.

Chop the onion, celery, garlic and mushrooms finely. Saute the onion, celery and garlic until tender. Add the mushrooms and saute until the water that comes out of the mushrooms has more or less evaporated. Add about 1/2 tsp. of dried thyme. Add the ground beef and cook through. Add a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce. Season a bit on the strong side with salt and pepper. Finally, add about 1 cup of water or stock to make it a bit sauce-like; cook down a bit to concentrate the flavors.

In the meantime, boil the potatoes in salted water in their skins, until tender and you can stick a skewer through one easily. If you have a potato ricer you can rice the potatoes with their skins on; otherwise, peel them (holding them with a kitchen towel) then mash with a potato masher. Stir the mashed potatoes around in a dry pan over fairly low heat until it's dried out. Turn up the heat to about medium, and make a well in the middle of the potato mash. Pour in some milk (about 3/4 - 1 cup or so for this amount) into the well, and drop as big a piece of butter as you dare into it. Now, leave it be (don't stir) until the milk is bubbling and the butter has almost completely melted. Then, whip the potatoes vigorously with a wooden spoon. Season with salt and pepper to taste - keep it on the slightly bland side.

Spread the beef mixture on the bottom of oven dishes that are attractive enough to take straight to the table. (I use round enameled cast-iron ones.) Spread the mashed potatoes on top of this - the potato should completely cover the beef, to a depth of at least 1.5cm / 1/2 inch or so. Score the top of the potato with a fork, and then sprinkle a bit of Worcestershire sauce on top. Dot with as many bits of butter as you dare.

Bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes until the top is browned. Eat straight out of the oven (have a glass of cold water handy for when a very hot piece burns a bit too much).

Serves 4 normal people or 2 very hungry people.