Greetings! As I mentioned in my last post, I recently suffered through a very bad case of food poisoning. As you might imagine, I haven’t been keen on eating out, despite how “nice” a restaurant is reputed. So, I’ve been cooking at home and decided that I would post one of the dishes I made. At any rate, this is NOT my recipe. Rather, it is Anne Burrell’s Spaghetti Bolognese, with modifications by me. Depending on how this goes, I may post some of my own recipes on the blog. Of course, a recipe post means no outfit of the night post for that particular day. Hey, cooking is messy work! 
On with the food …
Ingredients
1 large onion
1 large carrot
1.5 ribs celery
2 cloves garlic
1.5 lb. extra lean ground beef
2 6 oz. cans tomato paste
Fresh oregano
Fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
Kosher salt
1.5 c red wine
Olive oil
Parmesan cheese
Step 1
Wash, coarsely chop, and puree the onion, carrot, celery, and garlic. Place in your pan with a generous amount of olive oil. Salt the veggies generously.
Step 2
Our goal is to caramelize the vegetable matter. This is the most critical step of the recipe. It must be brown, brown, brown … just like caramel. It takes me 30 to 40 minutes to do this step. About halfway through, you have to give it your undivided attention because the garlic caramelizes first and you don’t want it burned. There’s a very fine line between optimal caramelization and burnt. Don’t be afraid to add more olive oil as you go … you really can’t add too much. Obviously, this is NOT a low-cal dish.
Step 3
To save time, I cook the meat separately … this allows me to drain every bit of animal fat too. I also brown the tomato paste in a separate pan. All these extra dirty pans save me about 30 minutes of cooking time.
You’re just trying to cook the meat in order to drain the animal fat, it doesn’t have to be brown. Browning comes later.
Browning the tomato paste.
Step 4
Combine the caramelized veggies, meat, and tomato paste into one pan. Cook everything together until the meat and tomato paste are BROWN (about 10 minutes). Add 1.5 cups of red wine and cook until the wine reduces by half. Mr. Sasy assures me that this is a good red wine. I don’t really know … they all taste pretty similar to me.
Combine everything you’ve cooked at this point and brown some more; add the red wine and cook until the wine is reduced by half.
Step 5
Add 2 cups of water, oregano, thyme, bay leaf to the pan. Add additional salt to your taste. I’ve tied the thyme with cooking twine for easy removal before serving. Cook (covered but vented) over gently bubbling heat for 2 to 3 hours.
The final steps.
The finished product …
Top your favorite pasta (this is whole wheat) with the sauce, freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and freshly cracked black pepper. Buon appetito!
Casey’s portion …
Casey can’t eat spicy food!
Makes 4 to 6 servings.
