homemade pasta with veal ragu

I've been traveling a lot for work lately (yes, I sandbag -- cook a lot on the weekend and then blog from lonely hotel rooms later in the week), so being back in the kitchen this past weekend was so great. It didn't matter to me that it's 85 degrees in Atlanta and that I shouldn't be thinking about heavy, hot dishes like homemade pasta and rich meat sauce, but I couldn't help it. The fact that I'm here, and my pasta machine is here, and we haven't seen each other in so long... Hence this meal. I can't fully explain how great homemade pasta is, but if I had to quantify it I'd say it's approximately 500 times better than the stuff from the box. In hindsight I guess I should have fed the pasta sheets through the attachment to cut them more evenly, but I loved the wide hand-cut noodles that I made myself.

Grocery list: a pound of meat (I used 1/2 pound ground veal and 1/2 pound local ground sirloin), 1 (28 ounce) can of peeled whole roma tomatoes, white wine, heavy cream, onion, garlic, rosemary or oregano, 2 eggs, A/P flour.



I've covered the whole process of making dough - mixing 1 1/2 cups A/P flour with 2 eggs and a couple of T water in a food processor, then kneading and rolling sections through the pasta machine to make sheets - so I'll just pick up here with the sheets of pasta. I learned the hard way that once you cut the noodles, do not allow them to touch each other for even a minute, or they'll stick together and be impossible to cook. I researched this a little more and apparently the only thing I missed was dusting the cut noodles with flour. Live and learn...



To make a deceptively simple and rich meat sauce (good for wide noodles like this), start by sauteing an onion and a few cloves of garlic for a couple of minutes in olive oil. Add the meat and brown. Mix in a couple of T of tomato paste, and cook for 2-3 minutes. Stir in 1/2 cup of white wine, and cook until mostly reduced, about 5 minutes. Stir in 1/2 cup of cream, and cook down another 4-5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, crushing each whole tomato by hand over the pan (I didn't put the juice in the pan, other than what came from crushing the tomatoes). Season with salt, pepper, and whatever fresh herbs you want to add for flavor, then simmer over low heat for as long as you can stand to wait.



Cook the fresh pasta in boiling salted water (I added a little olive oil too to prevent sticking) for 2-3 minutes; drain and serve immediately with the sauce and grated parmesan.

fontina stuffed veal meatballs

These meatballs are so flavorful and perfect, and who doesn't love a cheese surprise in the middle?? (This is another F&W recipe.) Grocery list: 1.5 pounds veal (or half veal, half pork, or any ground meat you prefer), 1 onion, garlic, thyme, rosemary, white bread, 1 egg, parmesan cheese, fontina cheese, tomato paste, 28-oz can diced tomatoes.

Start by cooking the onion in olive oil over medium heat for a few minutes, then add 2-3 cloves chopped garlic, and cool for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, and add 1tsp minced thyme leaves and a few sprigs of rosemary (also minced). While this cools for about 10 minutes, soak 2 pieces of white bread, crusts removed and torn into small chunks, in a splash of whole milk, for 5-10 minutes. Then squeeze out the milk and add the bread to a big bowl with the cooled onion mixture.

In this big bowl, add 1 beaten egg, 1/4 c grated parmesan, a good dose of salt and pepper, and the veal. Mix well and form into meatballs, and place these on a baking sheet. Count the number of meatballs you have, then cut the same number of little 1/2-inch cubes of fontina cheese. Press the cheese into the center of the meatball then form the meat around the cheese, then refrigerate for about 30 minutes.



In a big skillet, heat olive oil over med-high heat and cook the meatballs, turning several times, until browned all over, maybe 8-10 minutes. Then scoop them back onto a plate temporarily. In the same skillet, heat a little more oil if you need it, then add 1-2 garlic cloves *slivered*, cook 3 minutes till golden, then add 2 T tomato paste, stir, then add diced tomatoes and their juices, keep stirring. When the sauce is simmering, add the meatballs back in, then cover and cook over med-low heat for at least 10 minutes (can simmer longer).



You can serve the meatballs plain with just a baguette on the side for sopping up juices, or with pasta (I scoop out some of the sauce and toss with the pasta first).

lasagna-style strozzapretti (AKA my favorite food)

This is one of my all-time favorites. It's super easy to make, and it actually *tastes better* if you make it at least a day ahead of time. I've adapted this from a recipe I originally saw in Food & Wine magazine.

Start by boiling a pound of pasta. The original recipe called for pennette or ditali, but I've recently been fixated on strozzapretti. I had it for the first time at a little restaurant in Atlanta called Sotto Sotto. My waiter told me that the word means "priest-strangler", and traditionally it's made with a rich meat or bolognese style sauce. When priests used to go begging for food, they'd get a bowl of this, and it would fill them up so much that they'd not be hungry for a while.

In as big a saucepan as you have, heat some olive oil. Saute a chopped onion for a few minutes, then add about 2 pounds meat. This time I tried a new combination: half veal, half... bison (!!), which is supposedly healthier than chicken breast. I've also made this with veal + lamb and veal + sirloin, all great. Cook the meat until it's no longer pink, usually 10+ minutes. Turn off the heat, then stir in 1 can (28oz) diced tomatoes, drained, 1 T tomato paste, a couple of sprigs chopped marjoram, and a handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley. Salt and pepper a good amount. When the pasta is done, drain it and stir it into the sauce if your pan is large enough to hold it all.

Final step -- and this is what makes it so different-- make the white sauce. Melt a stick of butter, add 3/4 c flour, then keep stirring while slowly adding a quart of whole milk, a little at a time. This will make a thick bechamel-type sauce. When you're done with the milk, bring it to a just-barely-boil, then turn off the heat. Stir in 1 cup of grated parmesan, then 2 egg yolks.

Take half the sauce and dump it into the pasta mixture, stir, then put all of this into a big baking pan. I use this giant lasagna pan, which works great. If you only have a 9 x 13 pyrex dish to work with, you may want to reduce this whole recipe by about 1/4 (i.e. 1.5 pounds of meat, use 3/4 stick butter w/ 1/2 cup flour, only 3/4 pound pasta, etc). Then spread the rest of the cheese sauce across the top. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

When you're ready to cook it -- technically it can be cooked immediately after preparing, I've done it before and it's still delicious -- bake for 45-60 minutes at 350 degrees, until it's bubbly. Turn on the broiler right at the end to brown the cheese on top (move the pan up to the top rack), only 3-4 minutes. Like any lasagna, let it sit out for about 10 minutes before digging in.

On the side: wilted spinach with walnuts & cranberries. I use a big 10 oz box of fresh spinach, & cook it in a big pan over medium-high heat in olive oil. Keep turning the spinach to help it wilt faster. Add the walnuts, the juice of 1 lemon, s&p, and the dried cranberries. It only takes a couple of minutes for the whole batch -- I made it while the lasagna was resting.