Dear readers, I am in a funk. And not the good kind that allows you to wear a sequined gold dress and your sunglasses at night. The kind where everything you cook burns or tastes weird and everything you write reads cliché. It’s not a good place to be.

But onward we go, because cooking and writing is what we do here, however cringeworthy or awesome either turn out.

In the span of one week, four out of the five dishes prepared by my hands ended up as spectacular trainwrecks – ones that made microwaved frozen meals look like five-star food. The sole saving grace was this pasta with meat sauce, which is made annually at the first sign of winter’s chilly weather. It’s a hearty sauce thicker than blood, like an Italian chili almost, that goes well with garlic bread and even eaten alone in a bowl with a large spoon, should you be so bold.

In this case, it’s paired with a fresh pasta recipe adapted from Michael Ruhlman’s “Ratio,” using just the basics: flour and eggs. Nothing else.

I’ve been making this meat sauce for years, and thus it’s a recipe built on intuition. It’s a sauce that does its job and does it well, and with all of the flops I’ve been cranking out lately, it also helps to remind me that success, however little or large, is very, very sweet. And filling. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipes)

This Italian meat sauce borrows from its Bolognese sibling by including cream. Garnish the plate with basil chiffonade and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, if you please. Both sauce and pasta recipes can be doubled when serving more than two.

LOW-AND-SLOW MEAT SAUCE
Yield: 2 to 3 servings

• 1/2 pound ground beef
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 cup onion, minced
• 1/4 cup carrot, minced
• 1/4 cup celery, minced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 1 3/4 cup (about 14 ounces) crushed Italian tomatoes
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon butter
• Salt and pepper, to taste

1. In a 3-quart pot over medium-high heat, brown the ground beef. Remove from pot and drain. Set aside.
2. Add olive oil, onion, carrot, celery and garlic to pot and sweat for 2 minutes. Add tomato paste and cook for about 5 to 6 minutes, or until tomato paste darkens in color. (This will deepen its flavor.)
3. Add red wine to pot and use wooden spoon to scrape any bits of fond that may be stuck to the bottom of the pot. Let wine reduce in half, about 3 to 4 minutes.
4. Add tomatoes, water, brown sugar, oregano, basil and ground beef. Bring sauce to boil, then reduce heat to low cover with pot lid slightly ajar so steam can escape. Simmer for 3 hours, stirring occasionally. Taste sauce and adjust seasonings to preference. Add heavy cream and butter to finish, and serve with fresh pasta noodles (recipe follows).

PAPARADELLE PASTA NOODLES

Adapted from “Ratio” by Michael Ruhlman
Yield: 2 servings

• 2 eggs
• 6 ounces all-purpose flour

1. Mound flour into a bowl and make a well in the middle. Add eggs and use your fingers to swirl them around the flour until they are completely incorporated. (Dough will be kinda flaky in the beginning but will start looking like dough the more you mix.)
2. Remove dough from bowl and knead on a floured worksurface for 8 minutes, or until dough becomes uniform and no streaks of flour can be seen. Wrap with plastic and let rest for 10 minutes.
3. Using a floured pasta machine, feed dough through on lowest setting (for my Imperia, this is No. 1). Fold dough in half and repeat once.
4. Continue to roll out pasta until you reach your desired pasta thickness (Imperia: setting 5 or 6 is ideal). Place pasta sheet on a floured surface and cut into 1-inch strips. To cook: drop paparadelle into a pot of boiling, salted water for about a minute. Drain and serve with pasta sauce.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 6:19 pm and is filed under In the kitchen, Main dishes, Meat, Pasta/grains. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.