Bolognese Meat Sauce

Ragù alla Bolognese

It wasn't long ago that I showed you guys a Cathy comic of the title character gorging on all sorts of comfort food during the holiday season-- and that started with Thanksgiving. President's Day (my first ever, not that anything really happened today) is nearly over, and yet as Phil the groundhog said that there'd be six more weeks of winter, the waist on my pajamas is threatening a coup. Well, not really, and though I feel a little, er, cuddlier than normal, this very kind scale next to me says I'm fine. The problem is every time I fix a meal for myself, it turns out to be a million calories, because at freezing temperatures you feel like rewarding yourself with really tasty food.

Thank goodness that I'm not licensed to drive in this country and I love walking (even if it is at dermis-fracturing temperatures). So to get to the local Path-Mark, I have to walk 1.9 miles at least. That's most of the afternoon getting there and back (don't worry, there's a produce market 6 minutes away by foot). Part of me is thinking that as long as the produce market is there, I should really stay away from meat and dairy if I'm not going to go to the gym like I did back at home. The part of me controlling my hands made deelicious burgers and spag bol.

The thing about diets is, as Lori said, it's not quite so easy when you're a food blogger. And the whole point of starting this blog is to cook food I loved, not food that needs cheerleaders to get enthusiasm. And though Syrie did a fantastic job with her detox diet, I wonder if I will ever be successful at such a goal and whether I will just drop off the face of the blogosphere if I do. A lovely friend of mine said that people are more forgiving of doughiness than I believe, so that's encouraging, but we'll see what happens when the ice thaws.

But if my dough is a natural result of me avoiding menus consisting of these conceptualized in part by a woman who can slice deli meats with her shoulder blades, then I can rest easily. (Seriously, the way she is now, the breast-unbinding scene of Shakespeare in Love would have ended with Will jumping out the window or feigning an emergency phone call.)

What I have here is a hearty, earthy bolognese meat sauce from My Love for Naples, a book I recently reviewed on The Gastronomer's Bookshelf. It is quite easy to make-- the only hard part was processing the vegetables, as I had no food processor. So I grated a carrot. With my new microplane. Not doing that again. It's my first time to make it and the magic that transformed a giant carrot pancake to a rich, thick, red sauce still astounds me. There are a zillion versions of Bolognese meat sauce, and you can get a few more good ones from Tim's site, or this well-reviewed one from Saveur (they have a few more, which you can search).

Bolognese Meat Sauce (adapted from My Love for Naples by Anna Teresa Callen)

• 100g (3.5oz or 1 1/4 inch thick slice) prosciutto


• 1 sprig Italian parsley


• 1 onion, quartered


• 1 celery stalk, quartered


• 1 carrot, quartered


• 2 tablespoons olive oil


• 28g (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter


• 150g (1/3 pound) each: ground beef, ground veal, and ground pork


• 3/4 teaspoon chopped fresh sage


• salt to taste


• freshly ground pepper to taste


• 120g (1/2 cup) dry wine, preferably red


• 42g (3 tablespoons) tomato paste


• 500g (2 cups) chicken broth, homemade or a good quality canned broth, preferably low-sodium

In a food processor, combine the prosciutto, parsley, onion, celery, and carrot. Process to a fine consistency (I grated the carrot and celery, and minced the onion and prosciutto). In a saucepan, heat the olive oil and butter. Add the prosciutto-vegetable mixture and cook stirring until lightly browned (I took 15 minutes). Add the meat and sage, and cook stirring frequently until brown. Season with pepper and a dash of salt. Add the wine and let evaporate. Blend the tomato paste into the chicken broth and stir it into the pan. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for an hour. Check the seasoning again, adding salt or pepper if necessary, and stir it in for a minute or so, then remove from the heat.

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Raspberry Macarons

Macaron Framboise

This is my entry to the 29th Edition of The Blog Rounds, hosted by Dr. Em Dy of Pulse. The theme is LOOOOVE! Ack.
When I was standing in line at 4 in the morning on New Year's Day at the check-in counter of the airport, there were two American women behind me who made Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie seem like the kindest, most intelligent creatures ever. In whiny voices, they'd think (using the term loosely) out loud, "Why are we the only ones in New Year wear?" (uh because only people who absolutely HAVE to leave for their jobs leave on New Year's Day instead of spending it happily with their families?) "What airport doesn't have a McDonald's? I'm not going to be eating in no fucking Jollibee," and other such gems. I thought to myself, Lord, if ever I get married, let it not be for this.

I keep chuckling every time I remember the travesty that was Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson's marriage. Each time Nick would finally get a brief respite from inane questions about what's inside a can of tuna and gets to party with his male friends, Jessica calls him up to ask him whether bratwurst is made of beef or pork. How unfortunate that his severe loneliness was documented, but at least now he's out of it. Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt of The Hills seem to be heading for the same trainwreck, and I'm beginning to wonder if Heidi deserves Spencer (he who would name his adopted African baby "Dunk" (skip to 6:27 in the clip)) if she doesn't get out now, blinded by the promise of multimillion-dollar deals if they tie the knot. That's two less idiots to infect the pool of single people.

You'd think that I'd be more cynical given the unjust ability of these people to hook up. There are times when my insecurity would creep in and I think about how many more millions of guys out there are more attractive, intelligent, stimulating, taller (shallow I know), and athletic, and how many dozens are funnier (oh, do shut up). But if love involved any of these things then I might as well just give up-- but I don't. We don't love people because they're beautiful, they're beautiful because we love them. I read that when I was a kid! The feeling that you can't wait till the next time you see each other, the warmth and comfort, the care and concern that knots your stomach-- you can't manufacture these things. And there's no equation from the qualities above that would guarantee any of these wonderful, scary feelings. Even if the term is chemistry. I wonder if Heidi and Spencer feel that for each other?

THE HORROR! I captured these from an episode of Masterchef: The Professionals.
And now here's how I loosely associate that with my sub-par macarons. Because Duncan is my kinda guy with the obsessive details and experiments (okay, it's not quite so toxic as I make it out to be), and because I really really needed to finally try my hand at Italian meringue, I used his recipe. Only my fear of overmixing the batter resulted in slight undermixing, and my complacency with my oven temperature (never measured it before, really) made the baking time uncertain. It's nearly Valentine's day and for some reason blogosphere macarons have been popping out of the woodwork-- evolved from confections I guess-- and mine are really simple and imperfect. But they are delicious. And they brought a smile to everyone who ate them ("made with love" as the cliche goes-- but so true). So yes, it's not always about flash and fantasy, with food and with love :) I'll do better next time, and I swear there will be a next time. These were just so much fun to make! (Hopefully it won't be nearly 90% humidity back at home the next time!)

For the recipe, just follow Duncan's here. I added raspberry flavor compound that was generously gifted to me by my friend Rob of The Curious Kumquat. I had 98 grams of almond meal, icing sugar, and sugar, 72 grams of egg whites, and 24 grams of water, all with a total theoretical weight (not counting evaporation of course) of 390 grams. Therefore I added 3% of flavor compound by weight, or 12 grams (rounded up). I also added a booger-sized lump of red gel coloring from Wilton. I'm not sure if the best place to add those ingredients in is whisking it with the unbeaten egg whites, but that's what I did.

My filling was just a 70% chocolate ganache made with 100 grams chocolate and 100 grams cream, left to sit at room temperature to thicken after complete mixing. It complemented the sweet, tart raspberry flavor really well.

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Akronicity

Hi everyone and welcome (again)! Today's weather in beautiful Noo Joisey is probably a snowstorm. I'm not too sure because when you say storm/typhoon in the Philippines, it usually means extremely heavy rain and strong winds that sometimes howl. Snow is deceptively light and benign-looking, though I'm aware there's a lot of danger in it. And since it's not falling straight down, I guess that means it's a snowstorm. I took the opportunity of being stuck indoors to clean the bathroom, throw a robe over my pajamas so as not to titillate my neighbors too much, and struggle with the garden hose outside in the snow to blast the patina of germs on the trash can into oblivion. And now the time has come to post again, yay! And I begin with a tour of the first non-Joisey city I visited in the East coast: Akron, Ohio.

First thought: wow, it's kind of a winter wonderland. Only lake Erie is separating it from Canada. So cold that the skin of my legs threatened to progress into an ichthyosis-like state. My heels progressed as much, and I got two cracks on each foot, minute but enough to cause sharp pain with each step. I didn't let that deter me from getting my "tour" in, though. By now they are completely healed (and lint-from-socks-free, ugh) thanks to CVS Pharmacy's Heel Balm (for general and diabetic foot care) and a pumice stone (healed amazingly quickly-- 3 days). Rest of my skin managed with advanced therapy moisturizing lotion.

My experience on my first day was marred by extreme worry, though. You see, for some reason, my flight got canceled the night before, so no thanks to Travelocity (whose outsourced helpline assured me that the flight was not canceled despite all the websites and their mothers saying so) and thanks to Delta airlines for getting me an alternate flight, albeit after a 45-minute hold on the phone call. On the flight itself, we waited for some obscure reason for an hour before taking off, and opening the door after the flight took a long time too. Twenty minutes late for my boarding time on the connecting flight, I took a mad dash through the airport at Detroit, into another terminal (those concourses stretch out for MILES). With only about ten minutes to go before the plane took off, I almost passed out in my seat catching my breath and scaring my seat-mate. My face fell when in Akron, my luggage didn't arrive. I was trying to imagine how my interviewer would react if I came there in my day-old civvies. Thankfully, after 10 hours (11:30 in the evening), Northwest delivered my luggage to the hotel.

Walking the streets of Akron quite worried, the first thing I asked myself was, "Where is everybody?" It was a Sunday afternoon, and besides the occasional pedestrian (and one or two vagrants), only the skating rink had children and their parents. The latter was quite comforting. It appears that yesterday's (?) snowstorm had made everyone cuddle up in bed. Nice, then, that I had pictures to take, because that particular activity is no fun on your own (heh). However, after a bit of walking, I noticed that the main reason no one was around is because everything was closed on Sunday. Even the neighborhood Subway in downtown Akron (where the hospital and hotel was) closed extremely early. So, what we have are pictures of outdoor tables with snow dumped on them.


The room at Akron City Centre Hotel (formerly the Radisson) was amazing, primarily because of the existence of a Jacuzzi in the room. Also an activity more fun with 2+ people, but that didn't deter me from trying it out the night of my interview while watching Law and Order: SVU.

The Akron Art Museum was an imposing, interesting structure, and sadly closed the time I was there. I hear that many were quite opposed to it because it was too vastly different. My only concern is the function behind its form. (Makes a cool logo, though.)

A peek inside the HUGE library-- did not enter due to lack of time, sigh.

After my interview, we toured the areas outside downtown Akron, and I was extremely impressed by the houses I saw. Almost seemed like those ones they sell during Christmas with the single light source inside.

We also got to see Lebron James's house. Pic doesn't do it justice.

And now we go to the food. There are quite a few renowned restaurants in downtown Akron. It's quite obvious that the mayor of Akron is trying to remake downtown into a more cosmopolitan area, with upscale bars, restaurants, and retail stores (much like downtown El Segundo), but it's quite difficult to see in the dead of winter. One of the easily-spotted restaurants was the Chophouse, primarily Italian in influence.

Blurry pic of the interior.

The Original Chophouse Salad. My first order was the Lobster rolls, but they were all out, so I settled for this one. I'm still unused to American produce rules but obviously one shouldn't order something with fresh tomatoes in January. Even with the pieces of bacon, it was lacking sweetness, and entirely too large for just me. Could have served four people generously, and I ate half of it.

My server Sonia looked delighted when I ordered the Banana Cream Pie-- it's one of her favorites, she said. It was immense, but I didn't have a problem finishing the whole thing! (Have you met me?) The custard was a tad too gelled and solid (needs a little less gelatin for that "give"), but I have to say the neat presentation makes up for it. Bananas were ripe and delicious, custard not too sweet. Too much whipped cream but I was very satisfied with the dessert.

During our interview, a few residents took the interviewees (myself, Gabrielle, Bords, and Sanjay) to lunch at Bricco (everyone pronounced it Brick-oh, but I thought it was Italian-influenced, so I called it Brrrich-o). The appetizers were amazing-- my favorite was the pita crisps with tomato and goat cheese dip. I had the crab cake sandwich (good and huge! Again), and I had a peach-mango gelato for dessert.

During my one day of luggagelessness I had my dejected dinner at the hotel bar (since even Subway was closed), and I was very pleased that the prices weren't exorbitant as I had come to expect from hotels. The chicken sandwich coated with barbecue sauce was simple, but it really hit the spot after a cold day. As is my usual, I peppered the whole thing with fresh ground... pepper.

I sat at the bar and an American football game was playing. I wish I understood anything about it. (Er, Wikipedia?) I was like, "Hey, nice catch! Good play!"

I wish I could have shown more because downtown Akron isn't really Akron-Akron: there are the suburbs, residential areas, malls, and shops. It just isn't that accessible without a car, unfortunately. Even with a ton of snow dropped on top of it, I still saw glimmers of life and activity in the city, and the promise of progress.

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