My First Bolognese

First of all, it has been way too long since my last post. Life keeps getting in the of all the yummy posts...

A few weeks ago Zoe and I cooked a dish out of her kids cookbook called Squid and Eyeballs, that was essentially Buccatini in an Asian style sauce with tiny meatballs filled with scallion and since Zoe was cooking it "love".

That day was the first time I had ever cooked Buccatini and we all loved them. Buccatini is a thick spaghetti that is hollow down the center of it. It only cooks for about 8 minutes and is meant to be al dente and therefore works well with chunky sauces or as a substitute for Asian noodles. It is NOT readily available by all your standard pasta manufacturers and we had a little trouble finding it but all of the imported brands seem to have it (except Barilla).

We decided that we would try it again with a hearty Italian-style sauce and a bolognese seemed to fit the bill. I had never made a bolognese sauce before so we did a little research on recipes and I came up with a hybrid that worked for me/us, which is below the description of bolognese.

A bolognese is a sauce originating in Bologna (no surprise there!) that is a very meaty ragu of a sauce-more chunky less saucy is a good way to describe. It works well with thicker pastas.

We used 1 pound of buccatini for 3 people to go with this recipe and we have at least one more dinner for all of us.

1 lb ground turkey*
3/4 lb ground pork
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 onion finely diced
1 carrot finely shredded
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 cup heavy cream**
3/4 cup milk
Pinch of nutmeg
1 1/4 cup white wine
32 oz canned plum tomato in juice
ground thyme, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, dried Italian seasoning (basil, oregano & parsley)

In large non-stick skillet brown the meats with the garlic and a generous sprinkling of Italian season.

While meat is cooking, prep your veggies. Dice your onions finely and cut your carrots into fine matchsticks (I cheated...I had shredded carrot left over from something else that I bought and just used that...).

Begin heating your oil and butter in a large heavy duty pot with a lid.

Drain off the excess fat from your meat and set meat aside.

Once oil and butter are heated put in veggies along with a sprinkling of dried thyme. Cook for 3-5 minutes until tender. Stir in meat and cook 2 more minutes to incorporate.

Stir in cream and milk along with a pinch of nutmeg. Allow to cook for 5-7 minutes, stirring occassionally, allowing for the liquid to melt into the meat and cook down.

Add wine, salt and pepper to taste, and allow this to reduce for another 10 minutes.

While pot is reducing blend tomatoes to a chunky sauce texture.

Once the liquid has sufficiently reduced add the blended tomato. Stir to incorporate and allow to simmer for up to 1 hour.

I added crushed red pepper and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar at the end to give the sauce a little pop and zing!

*most recipes call for 1/2 pound ground chuck and 1/2 pound of ground pork. I used what I had on hand and adjusted amounts of other ingredients to compensate.
**for more richness use all cream, for less fat use all milk.

Enjoy!