Red Sauce and Pasta

The end of summer.  It's official at our house.  The sprinkler guys blew out our system this morning  To celebrate the end, the wife and I ate the last of my homemade lasagna.   Our good neighbor, Paul, was generous with his prolific tomatoes.  We ate many fresh salads, but finally used a couple of batches to make a chunky garden sauce.

Fresh tomato red sauce

2 pounds of fresh tomatoes - any kind
4-6 leaves of fresh basil
1 onion
1 -2 cloves of garlic
1 tbls sugar
1 tbls olive oil.

Easy stuff. Cut an X in the bottom of the tomatoes. Put a pot of water on to boil and fill a bowl with ice water. Plunge the tomatoes in boiling water for 60 to 90 seconds. (It takes a bit longer at high altitudes). Remove the tomatoes with a slotted spoon and place tomatoes in the ice water.

Spaghetti and meat balls

Meanwhile... for spaghetti: chop and cook an onion in a 3 or 4 quart pan. When the onion is soft and translucent, add as much garlic as you like.

The skin should peel right off the tomatoes. Discard skin and cut out the stem top. Add the tomatoes to the pan. Chop or crush them and bring the mixture to a simmer.  Cooking this for a long time would probably result in a traditional sort of sauce.  But, we are after a fresh garden taste.  After about 30 minutes remove from heat and blend.  A stick blender works well in this situation.  Don't try for a smooth sauce - leave it a bit chunky.

It's good to go right now.  I had some homemade meatballs in the freezer and some cooked Italian sausage. I added those to the sauce and let it simmer until everything was hot.  Serve over spaghetti noodles. (I had some of those in the freezer, too.)  The sauce will soak into the pasta making a very satisfying dish.

Lasagna

I used the second batch of sauce to make lasagna.  Start by cooking some onion garlic and hamburger in a 3 or 4 quart pot.

Prepare the tomatoes using the same methods detailed above.  When the hamburger is browned, drain as much fat as you care to and add the prepared tomatoes. Crush the tomatoes with a spoon against the side of the pot.  Let he sauce simmer. This sauce should be a bit thicker than the spaghetti sauce.


Rather than pre-cooking the lasagna noodles, soak them in warm water.  I used the lasagna pan. It leaves the noodles soft and they will not stick together. (This can be done with any kind of dried pasta. It works well for any type of casserole)

To build the dish start with a non-stick spray and the few spoons full of meat sauce.on the bottom of the pan. Next add a layer of noodles, a layer of cottage cheese (it's what I had - you could use ricotta), and a layer of mozzarella cheese. Top with a layer of meat sauce.  Add another layer of noodles, cottage cheese and - whoops - I ran out of mozzarella cheese. So I added a layer of 4 cheese Mexican blend and a final layer of meat sauce.  I had some provolone cheese slices in the deli drawer.  I added those and a good sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.  Cover the pan in foil and bake 30-45 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Nancy said it was the best lasagna she ever had.

I know the lack of detail in these recipes can be frustrating, but cooking should not be a chemistry lab.  It's about using ingredients on hand along with your intuition and taste to make something good.

Pot Roast and Noodles

I've done a previous post on Sunday Pot Roast Pot roast is one of those classic American dishes that I am always trying to perfect. Pot roast is a paradoxical dish: it contains the least expensive ingredients and the most expensive - time.



With the cold weather keeping us indoors it seemed like a good time for a roast and one on Nancy's favorite variations - home made noodles.







I started with a 2 pound chuck roast. The first step is to get a good browning sear on the meat. Add a bit of oil and heat the pot until the oil is starting to smoke. Brown the meat on both sides and any edge that will offer itself. Two to four minutes per side is enough.

Remove the meat, turn down the heat and add a Mirepoix, chopped onion, celery, and carrot. Stir the vegetables and let their water begin to loosen the brown bits on the bottom of the pan.

When the onions are translucent and the carrots have softened, add a cup or more of cheap red wine. The acid in the wine will finish deglazing the pan. It all adds flavor and color to the gravy.

Cooking shows often say use a good wine, use a wine you would drink. At the same time wine experts tell us that wine must be kept at mild temperatures or their complex organic compounds will be destroyed. Exactly right, heating the wine will turn an expensive wine into cheap wine.

Return the roast to the pot and add a can of beef stock and enough water to cover about 75% or 80% of the meat. Put a top on the pot, but leave it slightly ajar. Put the pot in a cold oven.

Inexpensive cuts of meat are best cooked low and slow. I 've tried a variety of methods. Recently I read a book on the science of cooking. In describing the perfect braise the author pointed out that the final internal temperature of the meat should be 160 degrees F. To get there he suggests a slow oven, starting at 200 degrees for the first two hours and raising it to 250 for the next hour. The roast can be checked after that for temperature and donesness. The meat should be easily penetrated with a fork - fork tender in fact. The idea is to never let the interior temperature of the meat reach the boil - 212 degrees as that will release moisture and result in a dry roast. A slow cooker started on high and then turned to low would probably replicate this cooking scheme.


Once the roast is in the oven, it is time to start the noodles. The recipe for pasta is very simple. 3 parts flour to 2 parts eggs - all by weight. Some cooks can do it by the feel of the dough. Some recipes use volume measurements, but amounts of both flour and egg can vary quite a bit.

In recipes large eggs are often considered to be 2 ounces, but local eggs are are closer to 1.6 ounces.




A cup of flour may be 5 or 6 ounces depending on how it is packed. Using a scale with a tare feature makes it all easy. I added three eggs to my bowl for a total of 5 ounces. Next I added 1 and 1/2 that weight ( 7 1/2 ounces) in flour for a perfect 3 parts flour and two parts eggs.



Mix the ingredients until the dough forms. Knead the dough about ten minutes. Wrap the dough in plastic and put in the refrigerator until the roast is nearly done.




When the roast is done, remove it from the oven. Let it cool a little in the braising liquid. The meat will re - absorb water as it cools.


Roll out the dough to a desired thickness. The flat dough can be rolled up and cut to make longer noodles. Put the noodles on a sheet of waxed paper.

Remove the roast to a plate and cover. Use a stick blender to puree the mirapox into the gravy. It will thicken the sauce. For this dish I cooked the pasta right in the gravy. Some of the starch from the noodles will add some additional thickness to the final dish.