Bolognese sauce

I know, I know.  This is clearly not baked nor is it something sweet (most of the things on Julie Bakes are at least 1 if not both of those things), but seeing as I baked two things yesterday, and have another on the agenda for today, I needed to mix things up a little.  Plus, B and I have been bringing in a lot lately (busy schedules, little time to cook), and I wanted to make a home cooked meal for us.  So I had the day off today, I got my exercise in this morning, and B was at work all day, so I set out to make something tasty.

One of the things we tend to pick up is the fusilli Bolognese from a local restaurant -- at the recommendation of one of B's friends -- and it's delicious.  So I googled Bolognese recipes and the first one that came up was Marcella Hazan's recipe.  I've seen her recipes featured on a lot of the foodie sites that I look at, and so I went right with that one, because if people rave about her recipes...well, you get it.  Her tomato sauce (which I haven't made yet), it supposed to be amazing!

This recipe is time intensive, but in the best way possible.  Cooking down the milk before adding in the wine, and cooking that down as well, and finally adding the tomatoes makes the sauce rich and delicious.  The final cooking time -- a minimum of 3 hours! -- makes the sauce tasty and full of flavor.

In the future I'd probably adjust things a little (less wine, more tomatoes), but this sauce is a keeper!  It would probably be great for a dinner party, since the last 3 hours of cooking are mostly watching and don't involve a lot of hands-on time.

Marcella Hazan's Bolognese Sauce
Found on the NY Times website

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp vegetable oil (I used olive oil, since we didn't have vegetable oil)
3 Tbsp butter, plus 1 Tbsp for tossing the pasta
1/2 cup chopped onion
2/3 cup chopped celery
2/3 cup chopped carrot
3/4 pound ground beef chuck (or you can use 1 part pork (1/4 pound) to 2 parts beef (1/2 pound)).  I used generic ground beef'
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill (we don't have a pepper mill -- something to register for, perhaps?! -- so I used regular ground pepper)
1 cup whole milk
Whole nutmeg (I used already ground nutmeg, which B and I don't particularly love, so I used about 1/16 tsp)
1 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cups canned imported Italia plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice

1 1/4 to 1 1/2 pounds pasta
Freshly grated parmigiana-reggiano cheese, at the table

Directions:

Put the oil, butter, and chopped onion in the pot.
Turn the heat on to medium.
Cook and stir the onion until it has become translucent.
Add the celery and carrot.
Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring vegetables to coat them well.

Add the ground beef, a large pinch of salt, and a few grindings of pepper.
Crumble the meat with a fork.
Stir well and cook until the beef has lots it's raw, red color.

Add milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely.
Add a tiny grating -- about 1/8 tsp (I used half of that) -- of nutmeg.
Stir.

Add the wine.
Let it simmer until it has evaporated.
I added a pinch of salt and some pepper here to taste.
Add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all the ingredients well.
When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through the surface.

Cook, uncovered, for 3 hour or more, stirring from time to time.
While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to see that it begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat.
To keep it from sticking, add 1/2 cup of water whenever necessary (I added 1/4 cup water after about 40 minutes).
At the end, however, no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce.
Taste and correct for salt.

Toss the sauce with the cooked, drained pasta, adding the tablespoon of butter.
Serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese on the side.

Bucatini pie

I've had a long past 2 weeks, and so has B.  We're both working a ton, which is great, but with me leaving really early for work and him getting home from work as late as 11:15 p.m. (!!), I sometimes don't get to see him as often as I'd like (at least during wakeful hours).  Last night we both managed to be home by 9 p.m. and we even ate dinner together.  Turns out that today is my early day at work and he doesn't expect to work late, and I felt like that was cause for a (mini) celebration...or at least a home cooked dinner that was more than a protein and salad (our mainstay).  Honestly, I was probably only looking for an excuse to make this recipe, but heck, maybe I'll throw in a glass of wine and we can have a little party.

This recipe, much like the hummus I made before, is a savory one.  But unlike the hummus, it is baked and it does have the word "pie" in the title.  I've done a few savory things in the past (there was this garlic parmesan pull-apart bread and this killer mac and cheese) that also required baking, so I felt that this was an OK thing to post on this baking blog (which, by the way, turns 4 years old in 2 days!).

We usually make our own pasta sauce, which we call marinara sauce, for our meatballs and pasta.  I decided that, since I was going all out with this homemade bucatini pie, I might as well make some homemade sauce as well.  So I did just that!  We don't have a recipe, per se, but since I'm on this "savory kick," I've added a link to it here and below. 

Just one note about the pasta shape: I love bucatini but have found it difficult to find in the past.  Not all stores carry it.  Much to my dismay, there was no bucatini at either of the two grocery stores or two other bodegas that I checked out.  I used spaghetti instead and it came out really well!

Bucatini Pie
From Food and Wine

Ingredients:

4 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
6 large eggs, beaten
1 pound bucatini, broken in half (Bucatini is a long pasta with a hole in the center so that it is actually a tube, also known as Perciatelli)
1.5 cups freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (4 oz)
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp freshly ground pepper (no, that is not a typo!)
2 tsp kosher salt

Warm marinara sauce, for serving

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375F.
Lightly grease a 10-inch cast iron skillet (our cast iron skillet is technically a grill pan, with grooves on the bottom, so I baked this in a regular 9" round metal cake pain, adjusting a little for time since it was a bit thicker).

In a large pot, bring salted water to a boil.
Add the bucatini and cook until al dente (the pasta will continue to cook a little while baking)
Drain the pasta.
Run under cold water to stop the cooking.
Drain well.

In a large bowl, whisk together the butter, eggs, cheese, cream, parsley, olive oil, garlic, pepper, and salt.
Add the pasta and toss to coat.
Scrape into the prepared skillet.
Bake for about 30 minutes, until just set..
Remove from the oven.

Preheat the broiler.
Broil the bucatini pie 6 inches from the heat until golden, about 5 minutes.

Transfer to a rack and let cool for 10 minutes before cutting into wedges.

Serve with warm marinara sauce.

The pie can be kept at room temperature for 4-6 hours before serving.