Best Bolognese Sauce

In all honesty, thinking of what to make every day for dinner is becoming very difficult. I’m finding I have less mental energy to prepare what I’d like to make every single day and it’s adding to this burnt out feeling I’ve been having. I’m trying to get over this hump and cooking new dishes and trying out this stack of recipes is helping to motivate me and give me ideas on what to make. It gets a little difficult because Caleb can be picky at times but the world is my oyster and there has to be a mountain of dishes I can try to make.

This weekend I decided to tackle a bolognese sauce. As traditional and iconic as this sauce is, I’ve actually never made it and felt down to the task of trying my hand at it. I looked to BA and of course, Andy Baraghani has a recipe and a video for it. Honestly, I personally don’t enjoy Andy’s personality so I’m not a fan of his recipe videos. I can still appreciate his skill as a cook and trust in his recipes though so I went all-in on the website recipe and skipped around the video before I started just to get a feel for the cooking.

Of course, I tweaked the recipe a little as needed so my meat this time around was half ground beef, and the other half was Italian sausage just because Caleb bought quite a bit of it when quarantine was kicking in and all the other meat was sold out. Since we don’t typically eat much Italian sausage, most of it ended up sitting in the freezer and we still have a ton but I figured this would be my time to use it. Caleb isn’t a huge fan of beef either but he’ll eat it in a meat sauce with all the flavors melding together since he can’t really taste the beef specifically. Perfect time to use both.

So, I browned the meat in the pan, took it out, then added the sofrito type mixture that Andy makes. I decided to skip the pancetta since I already had more going on with the Italian sausage. I think it’s a good substitute for now. My attempts to clear out the freezer will prevail. I added the meat back, and used some canned tomato juice as a substitute for the wine and kept moving on. I don’t have wine here and didn’t want to buy a bottle just for this since we tend not to go through wine at all. Andy mentions the acidity in the wine helping break down the meat so I’m hoping the acidity in the tomato water will work similarly. I added chicken stock (the last of the boxed stock sitting in the fridge!) and let the whole thing cook for 2 hours.

Once that two-hour mark hit I started the pasta. The Italian sausage was still a little tough and I figured it could still go for longer and be great so I let the meat sauce keep cooking and waited a little longer. Once the pasta was 3 mins out, I moved it to the sauce with about 1 cup of pasta water and let it finish cooking. I was a little worried about the sauce not sticking well and being too watery from the pasta water but then I realized I forgot to add the parmesan and once I did that, it thickened up more and hit a better consistency.

All in all, this was a pretty successful run at bolognese (with modifications). Caleb wanted more of a kick to it so the addition of pepper flakes or something along those lines would’ve appeased him a little more. I think it was a little salty for me with all the additions but it was a solid sauce. I’m not sure that I’d do another 3 hours to make something so average but it was a good dish and it wasn’t terribly difficult to make.

Creamy Pasta with Mushrooms and Prosciutto

I’ve been on my roll and I’d like to try and make at least one saved recipe a week to try and test out while I’m here working from home since I have a little extra time while I’m waiting for pages to come in. This week I decided to try Claire’s Pasta with Mushrooms and Prosciutto except I went for pancetta instead, just because pancetta works better for me when I’m cooking.

This is a pretty simple dish which I appreciate. I cooked my pancetta, removed it from the pan and then cooked down my mushrooms. Claire uses nice wild mushrooms but I haven’t made a trip to Wegmans in a hot minute so I just went with baby bellas. Minor alterations but the spirit of the dish lives on. Once the mushrooms cooked down, I added shallots, chicken stock (store-bought since we still have some in the fridge waiting to be used) and then eventually I added my pasta water and spaghetti. Claire uses a really beautiful pappardelle but we have two boxes of spaghetti in the pantry and as I said, small alterations. I added the cream, finished with some butter, and topped with some reserved pancetta! Finito.

This was a really nice creaminess but I worried that it was a little too loose and might’ve done better reheated when the sauce had time to cool and solidify a little more. I was still happy with the consistency and the flavor though. The pancetta was a little gamey which I suppose I should remind myself of because in this case, it would’ve probably been nicer with the prosciutto. This hit the spot for something creamy though and I’m happy with the choice to try it. I’m not sure that it was outstanding enough to add to my recipe book but It was a solid cook for sure.

CORT - Wild Ginger Asian Fusion

It’s time for a ‘Treat Yo Self’ lunch of sushi. I’ve been craving it so much but haven’t had the opportunity get get some, but today is the day! I’m in the midst of looking for a new apartment and moving and finding a storage unit as backup and stress levels are high. Who knew that covid would be the time that everyone is moving to a new apartment. I sure didn’t. All things considered, I felt I needed to give myself something to look forward to and treat myself to sushi at Wild Ginger Asian Fusion once again.

LOCATION: 45 MAIN ST., CORTLAND, NY 13045

This time around I decided to mix it up a little and try the Tiffany Roll. This is a specialty fried roll with crab, avocado, cucumber, and a special sauce they drizzle on top. I, of course, added my Ebi sushi, and decided to try a Hokkigai sushi order today which is just surf clam. Last time I tried the scallop sushi and while it was fresh and a good texture, it wasn’t very flavorful so I thought I’d keep trying new ones out until I found something I love as much as ebi.

This was a solid order of food. As I mentioned last time, an order like this comes to around $20 which is a little pricey to me for sushi but seeing as I’m in the middle of farmland Cortland, it’s worth it every once in a while. I started off with the Tiffany roll and this thing was AMAZING. It was still warm from being fried and it was crisp but still light and fresh from all the ingredients inside. It had a little bit of a kick from the sauce which I enjoyed thoroughly and it might’ve been my favorite bite this time around.

Per usual, the Ebi doesn’t let me down and I tend to order it just for comfort. Nothing wrong with a simple classic. The surf clam was similar to the scallop last time. It tasted fresh and clean but didn’t provide much flavor and had that overly chewy texture that I wasn’t super fond of. I don’t like having to fight my food and with the surf clam, it can be tough to cut through. Not bad, but I wouldn’t order again. Then again, I’m pretty sure I’ve had surf clam before and I couldn’t remember how I felt about it and ordered it again so apparently, there are some things I don’t learn. I’m already looking forward to the next time I get to treat myself to this lunch and the Tiffany roll is definitely up for re-order.

Chicken Stock/Chicken Noodle Soup

I’m currently in the process of moving, exciting! (Not really) and while I’m still apartment hunting with the impending doom of my lease running out at the end of this month, I also have so much stuff in my freezer that needs to get eaten so I don’t have to carry it with me to another place. Cue the chicken stock.

A while back Caleb and I decided to tackle some fried chicken at home but I bought some drumsticks that were not a cut that Caleb enjoyed so along with a rotisserie chicken carcass in my freezer, it was time for my first run at homemade chicken stock.

I did some googling to get some basics and came up with a whole onion and 2-3 stalks of carrot and celery each to go into the stock. I cut everything up and dumped it on a large pot with all the chicken and about 3 quarts of water (my pot fit about 2.5 quarts and I added the last half quart partway through the cook once some of the water evaporated.) 3 hours later my stock was born!

Im so happy I did this because with all of the stress of apartment hunting in the age of Coronavirus, I needed the kitchen to smell like home. The smell of chicken stock made me feel like I was back in Rochester with my parents making some homemade soup with chicken stock starting early in the morning. Even on a hot summer day, I welcomed the warmth of this smell and I could just feel myself let things go just for a little while.

I ended up with 1.5 quarts of stock once i strained out all the solids and cleared out some of the excess fat on top, which I packed up and partially froze. I kept out the half quart and refrigerated it and 2 days later I made some noodle soup for myself. Ironically I didn’t have any chicken for my soup but I had tons of veggies and a box of little noodle rings that I purchased just for this occasion.

I followed Molly Baz’s recipe and it all came together very quickly in just one pot.

The stock could’ve used more salt and I topped it with some black pepper and was super happy with the result. I’m so excited to reheat the rest of this stock later when I need another warm bowl of soup. It felt so easy and satisfying to make my own stock at home and it was simple beyond belief. No wonder different soups were made this way growing up. I’m so happy they were. I needed home right about now and I’m happy I found a way to do it. Of course my parents would’ve have meat galore and home grown asian veggies like lotus root and winter melon but this was close enough.

Lentil Burgers

I’ve been trying to get a little adventurous with my recipes and figured I’d get through some more of my BA video recipes that I’ve saved. This week was Chris Morroco’s Lentil Burgers from the Healthyish line of recipes. It’s summer and it’s hot and I’m not a huge Burger person all the time anyway so I like trying out these lentil/veggie burgers and this one has mushrooms which I’ve totally been into lately. Our friends Matt and Holly have been making a lot of veggie burgers both store-bought and homemade lately and I’ve been drooling at them. Caleb isn’t into veggie burgers really so this was all for me. Lunch prep for the week so fingers are always crossed it comes out tasting good because I have to eat it all until it’s gone.

Chris’s recipe is super easy with just lentils and mushrooms and of course some seasoning. Like before, lentils were a trick to find but now that I know what grocery store there in, I made a beeline and was ready to go. Cook the lentils, mix everything together, mash a little, and cook it in a pan.

I didn’t have a ring mold but I did have an egg mold which is just a ring mold with a handle and it’s the perfect burger size so that worked out great! I didn’t mash the mixture super well to combine so it did fall apart a little while I was cooking it and later when I was reheating and assembling it didn’t keep the patty shape but it didn’t fall apart completely so that was alright.

Chris also makes a yogurt sauce to go on top which I love because its so fresh and garlicy but also tart from the plain greek yogurt.

This was super easy to keep eating all week and held up well. I did it open face with some lettuce and I was so happy with the miso and mushroom flavor it in the whole time. I would totally make it again and recommend it.