Themes - Gracious & Good, Next Steps
Food/Tech Tie In – Browning, Reducing, Developing Flavor in Layers,
My love of Italian food knows no bounds. Be it at our dinner table growing up where my mother’s best dishes were, Lasagna, Cannelloni, Eggplant Parm and the likes vs soul food, (which was not), or in my travels around the world including in various Italian cities, that special combination of herbs, spices, and produce, makes Italian food one of my go to’s, when I really want some Good For Your Soul food, especially…the sauces.
While a good white sauce or cream sauce (oooo think, mushrooms, heavy cream and oregano) can peak my palette’s interest, its that red sauce that speaks to my culinary heart and the thicker the better. I mean stand your spoon up in it thick. Ragu is the word and sauce the verb! This past winter, I had a serious hankering for a Ragu but with a fuller rounder flavor profile, so I veered off my normal ground turkey path and grab a couple of pounds of ground beef. Be it in cooking it or eating it, its been a few years since I have had it HereInMyKitchen and I must confess, I forgot how different cooking and cooking with ground beef is. A completely different aroma filled My Kitchen (can we say mooo) and the very distinct profile it helps build was leading the effort to satiating the full, round, experience I was craving as I built the Ragu flavor in layers.
Once seasoned and reduced, it was mixed into them ladled atop of my favorite pasta that I may eat a couple of times a year, ok a few more if Im making a Ragu, Pappardelle. I discovered Pappardelle in a wonderful but long-gone restaurant in New York City, where I did have the mushroom, heavy cream, oregano AND butter sauce on top. Not sure why I didn’t know about this pasta before, but in that moment, it shifted spaghetti #9 (a family go to), linguini, and ziti elsewhere and established its place on the pantry shelf.
Not that this is a cold weather dish, cause it can be eaten it anytime of the year, but on that day, this past winter, HereInMyKitchen, with a little shaved Parm, Black Pepper and Parsley, Good For Your Soul Beef Ragu with Pappardelle, was ALL that was needed.
Thank you “Tiffany” for vibing one of my “What The Chef Ate” posts on IG and requesting the recipe for a dish that was just slated as, an ad hoc photo share.
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