Opening the icebox

Don’t give me shit.  I know what I’m burning in my Dutch oven is not really Bolognese, and it might make Marcella Hazan roll in her grave; that’s assuming she’s dead.  My Italian Grandmother whose family was from the south, a little town called Formia on the coast just north of Naples, called her meat sauce, “meat sauce”.  She usually made it with ground beef, but I prefer whole cuts.  On rare special occasions she would add pork ribs, which would make my father’s brothers brag to each other like they we’re still trying to bang the same girl.  “She’s put the pawk in it tonight”, “ahh, that’s where the flay-vas at”; it was like the pope was coming for dinner or something.

 I like to call mine Bolognese.  I like the way it sounds, and I tell my wife “we’re having Bolognese” with all the Roberto Benigni I can muster.  Bowl-oh-NAY-zeah!

I start by opening the icebox.  What’s in it;  any short ribs, ox tail, pork ribs, lamb shanks, shoulders?  You get the point.  I’m looking for the stuff that needs that long love time, not something you’re going to whip together in half an hour.  I’ve made this stuff out of one kind of cut, and five kinds.  I think it tastes better if you get two or three and one of them is pork, but I’m just saying.  I’ve had a beef short rib fetish for a long time but lately I’m on a shank kick.  Lamb shanks are great.  So are pork shanks.

Regardless, get your meat together. 

Then see what else is kicking around.  Garlic and canned whole peeled tomatoes are essential (the tomatoes not being so essential if you’re making a classic Bolognese).  Mario Batali will tell you that you need to use the tomatoes from San Marzano, Italy.  Maybe you do.  Each time I go to the grocery store I almost buy them but they’re a million times more money than the other brands.  They might make that much of a difference, but I can’t bring myself to spend six bucks on a can of tomatoes.  I like the Pastine or Renzi, but honestly, you cook the crap out of them, I’m sure that in the end just about any will do.  Carrots are nice.  I’m trying to remember if I ever add celery, I usually don’t have a supply handy.  I never use onions.  I stopped adding onion to my tomato sauces a long time ago and I think it’s a good thing.  Traditionally you braise your meat in milk or cream, but I’ve always added the cream in the end.  I should try it the other way sometime.  Herbs are good, and nutmeg, and if you have the rind of an old hunk of Parmesan Reggiano, toss it in.

Most people fuck things up in the first ten minutes. 

Get your pan hot.  I like to use a Dutch oven.  You don’t need to spend your kid’s college fund on a fancy Le Creuset at Williams Sonoma, hit the camping section of Wal-Mart and get a Lodge cast iron one for twenty bucks.  I recently stepped up to a Lodge enameled cast iron one for a little more at Target and it’s pretty awesome.  Anyhow, whatever you’re using, get it hot, I mean really hot, like smoking hot.  Coat it with olive oil.  Season your meat with twice as much kosher salt and freshly ground pepper as you think you need to and arrange the soon-to-be delicious cuts in the pan.  Don’t throw them all in at once, you need to keep the pan hot, so take your time.  If you need to brown the stuff in two or three batches, who cares?  You’ve set the day aside for this, right?

Now, open the bottle of red wine that you’re going to deglaze the pan with.  I like to cook with wine that’s from the country I’m cooking.  It doesn’t have to be that bottle of Tignanello you’ve been hanging on to for just the right special occasion, but it should be something that you’d like to drink.  I’m still surprised at how many Americans drink shit wine on a daily basis, and the excuse is always that they can’t afford to drink anything better.  Bullshit.  The magnum of Yellow Tail that you’re drinking is no cheaper than a simple Rosso Piceno from Le Marche, or even a Tuscan IGT.  All over Europe there’s tons of great inexpensive wine being made, and more often than not it will be far more food friendly than the cheap mass produced fruit bombs in the super-size bottles.  Find a wine shop that has a good selection of European stuff and get to know the guy who’s doing the buying.  Nine times out of ten he’ll turn out to be a pretty helpful person who will be happy to turn you on to the good stuff that he drinks, but needs to stand on his head to sell to the locals. 

Anyhow, pour a glass.  (Any excuse to drink a little wine in the afternoon is a good one).  The wine is meant to be a distraction.  If you’re looking for the right bottle to open, fumbling with the corkscrew etc, you won’t fuck with the meat you just put in the pan.  And don’t.  The best way to screw up a great meat sauce or braise is to not get the right crust on your meat.  Leave it alone; it will take a while.  Don’t poke it or move it around or anything.  Drink your wine, prep your garlic and carrots, and open your cans of tomatoes.  By now the meat should be a deep dark golden brown.  Flip it over and pour another glass. 

I worked last night, and Thursday and Friday before that.  I’m still a little wound up from the Germans who didn’t realize that I make my nights money on tips.  My feet and elbows are still sore and I’m still a little grumpy and tired.  I’ve been treating you like you were reading an Anthony Bourdain book.  I apologize.

The last time I made Bolognese was a week or so ago on a day that my son Rafa decided not to take his afternoon nap.  He was all wound up and cranky.  I cook a lot with Rafa and even though he doesn’t have the smelling thing down yet, I get a kick out of handing him stuff to smell; herbs, garlic, ginger.  He makes the same face that I do, but I don’t think that he’s breathing in.  I think he’ll get it in time.  Anyhow, he was bonkers so I set him up in his high chair next to my cutting board and started prepping.  When I was chopping garlic, I put a clove on his tray, same with the carrots and herbs etc.  He drank from his sippy cup while I seared off the meat, and he went berserk when I deglazed the pan and the alcohol burned up in a KISS like display of pyrotechnics.  We tasted it together and adjusted the seasoning and with all of this, his restless day turned into a good one.   This is why I like to cook this kind of stuff.  It’s the sort of thing that once you get it going your more apt to open a book or go for a walk or have sex than flip on the TV.  It’s slow and the dividends are huge.

Once my meat is that deep dark golden brown I take it out of the pan, drain off some of the fat, add a little more olive oil and toss in the carrots, (if you’ve got celery you’ll probably want to throw it in now).  I like to dice them super small so they kind of fall apart by the end.  Once they’re soft I squirt in a bunch of tomato paste.  Remember back in the day when tomato paste only came in a can and you always had to toss out what you didn’t use?  Nowadays, you can buy it in a tube.  It’s awesome.  I always have one in the fridge, and tend to use it more often since I’m not hemming and hawing about throwing away half a can.  I like to fry the paste up getting it good and dark, not burnt, but caramelized.  Just before it’s done I add the garlic.  How much?  Am I using lamb and ox tail, or pork and chicken thighs?  I try to add just the right amount, cutting the clove in half and slicing it as thin as I can without breaking out the Goodfellas single edge razor. 

Only a sensitive person can sauté garlic.  It needs to be treated with respect.  If undercooked and raw it can be obnoxious like a pubescent teenager, but if you over cook it, you might as well toss it out and start over.  It becomes bitter and useless.  Pay attention to your garlic, it’s like your relationship with your spouse. 

Just when it’s on the verge of becoming bitter trash, I hit the pan with the red wine, enough to cover everything and then some.  Since I’m already holding the bottle, I usually refill my glass.  I like to cook the wine down till it’s almost syrup like, scraping up anything that stuck to the bottom during the browning with my wooden spoon.  Add a can of tomatoes (reserving the liquid), and a little salt and pepper.  I like to squeeze the tomatoes with my hands before I put them in; maybe it helps them break down. 

Next comes the stock, many people leave this out of their sauces, but I think it’s the pulse of the dish.  If you can ever get your hands on Veal stock, the shits like gold.

I used to work at this restaurant that made veal stock every morning.  When I first started I was seduced by the smell each time I would come in for work.  I remember my manager cackling at me and saying that she wanted to burn her clothes when she got home at night to get the smell off.  Fast-forward three years, I now doing her job, the smell of roasting bones would turn my stomach.  But nothing has the gelatin of veal stock, and it will really make your braises rich and silky, sadly it’s kind of hard to get your hands on.  I used to get the real stuff from the restaurant, but now days I’ve got to make due with what I have at home, usually beef or chicken.  I try to make stock often and freeze it in ice cube trays so I always have some on hand.  If I don’t have any, I’ll sheepishly use a low-sodium boxed chicken stock (Rachel Ray would be proud).

Now, pile in the meat you had taken out earlier, add enough stock to just about cover it, put a lid on it, turn it down as low as it goes or throw it in a 300 degree oven and leave it alone.

I’m thinking as I often do, of a critique with my instructor Paul years ago in the late afternoon light of our Tripp Street studio.  The aesthetic of our studio was to follow the direction of the light with our charcoal marks or brush strokes, creating a methodical collection of stripes like some zebra on steroids, or a hard driving rain in an autumn windstorm.  In adjusting my work he surprisingly went across the grain with his marks, and I immediately called him out on his fumble.  He began to tell me a story that was totally unrelated to the drawing at hand.  When he was a kid, every time his mother would cook a ham she would cut an inch off of each end before putting it in the roasting pan.  One day, like any kid with their incessant barrage of questions, he asked his mom why she always hacked up the ham.  She said she did it because that’s how her mother did it, and that was that.  At the next holiday gathering Paul asked his grandmother the same question, and not surprised he got the same response.  Finally Paul sought out his ageing great grandmother and put the question to her.  “Well Paul, I did always cut off the ends of the ham, and I did it because we couldn’t afford a roasting pan large enough to hold the entire thing.”

I have a friend who doesn’t cook, but likes to eat well.  Last time he visited, over roasted butternut squash tortellini with chilies, brown butter and sage, he said that he wanted to learn a few recipes.  I’m more of a principals rather than a recipe guy.  I’ve always wanted to write a cookbook, (though I’m by no stretch of the imagination qualified to do so), that had no recipes at all, only principals.  There would be a chapter on how to sauté, how to roast, grill, braise…  you get the point.  If you learn how to work with a pan on a flame you can sauté or sear anything.  But if you learn how to make Salmon with capers and lemon, you might be eating the same fucking dish for the rest of your life. If you only learn a recipe or two you’re screwed if the store is closed and you don’t have the quarter pound of bacon the recipe calls for, when in fact you do have half a pound of pancetta about to rot in your fridge that would work just fine.  If you can make Bolognese, you can make Coque au Vin, or pulled pork, or pot-roast, or lamb shanks, or brisket, or any other braise.  It’s the technique of braising that’s important, not the recipe.  It’s like learning to paint, if you first learn to see and then learn how to interpret what you’re seeing and put it down on paper or canvas, you can paint anything you want to.  But, if you only learn how to draw or paint a figure by some schematic technique, your limited to a life of awkward contrived work. 

After a couple of hours, dig into your pot and pull out a hunk of meat.  Give it a pinch, if the meat falls apart in your fingers then your there.  Take all of your meat out and pull it apart.  I like to leave things a little chunky, but whatever you do at this point, it’ll be good.  Toss out the bones and throw the meat back in the pot.  If it seems like you’ve got too much liquid, leave the top off and let it reduce some.  This is when I add the cream and the herbs.  I usually warm the cream up first, I don’t know if it would separate, but it seems like a good idea to add warm cream to a hot sauce.  I’ve been on a chili flake kick lately, I don’t think it’s traditional to add it, but I dig it.  I stir in enough cream until I get the deep rusty color of my grandmother’s Sunday meat sauce.  Then I let it cook a little longer.

It was Mario Batali, not my grandma that taught me how to cook pasta.  He says to dress it like a salad.  It should be the condiment; the pasta should be the main event.  This shit is great with home made pasta; wide noodles.  It’s also really good over a board of creamy polenta.  Transfer a few ladles of it to a sauté pan, boil your pasta a few minutes shy of done and finish it off in the pan with your sauce.  Take it to the plate and hit it with a drizzle of olive oil and a little grated Parmesan  (spend the dough on the real stuff, it makes a difference).  Along with what’s left of the wine (or maybe a second bottle if it was that kind of a day) and a crust of bread toasted and rubbed with a clove of garlic, something good on the radio, and Rhonda across the table; we’re ready to eat.