Bolognese Sauce

This is my recipe for bolognese sauce. It's been tweaked many times and this is now our family favorite version!

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 6-12 cloves garlic (I use more if mincing, less if microplane grating)
• 1 shallot, minced
• 1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
• 1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes
• 1 medium zucchini, shredded
• 1 cup chicken stock or beef broth
• juice of 1 lemon
• 2 Tbsp minced fresh basil
• 1 Tbsp minced fresh oregano
• 2 tsp dried thyme
• 2 tsp dried rubbed sage
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 1 1/2 tsp ancho chili powder (this is a mild chili powder - don't use 1 1/2 tsp of cayenne!)
• salt & pepper to taste

Cook ground beef in a large stock pot until browned. While cooking, sauté onion and shallot in olive oil in a frying pan, 5 minutes or so until the onion is translucent, but do not brown. When beef is browned, add cooked onion and shallot, and everything else. Simmer for 30 minutes to 2 hours, lower heat if cooking longer, higher if you spaced out and forgot to get started on dinner until everyone's already hungry!

Some day I should make this with fresh tomatoes...

Spectacular Failure: Green Goo!

When I was a kid, I used to play in the kitchen, combining all kinds of random ingredients and hoping it turned out as something edible. It never did. One time, I even started an oven fire with my experiments.

Well, it turns out I didn't really learn anything growing up because I still sometimes end up throwing a bunch of stuff together and hoping for the best. Yesterday, I tried to make a certain food without a certain critical ingredient, and thought that if I just substituted enough other ingredients it would work. Clearly, it didn't. This was the sad, green, blob-like result. And no, I'm not admitting to what this was supposed to be, or to what ingredients went into it, but there were probably a dozen, and the color did not come from food coloring. Be very afraid!

Bonus: it served double duty as an awesome toddler toy. For 5 minutes anyway.

Meatballs!

Because who doesn't love ball-shaped food? Speaking of, I've yet to find Schweddy Balls at the store... humph. Anyway. Here's our recipe for meatballs. It's heavily modified from this one, so if you raise your eyebrows at the ketchup and cinnamon, that's where that idea came from. It works!

These meatballs happen to be gluten-free. You could definitely substitute regular bread crumbs, but I would use only 1/4 cup. I used 1/2 cup here because I didn't plan ahead so I just toasted a few pieces of GF bread and crumbled it with my hands, so the crumbs were bigger (see in the pic above).

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 large yellow onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, microplane grated
• 1 egg
• 1/2 c gluten-free bread crumbs
• 1/4 c grated zucchini (about half a small-medium zuke)
• 1/4 c ketchup
• 1/4 c fresh oregano leaves (about 2 Tbsp after mincing)
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon

Dump everything in a big bowl. Wash hands thoroughly. Go at it, squishing and mixing with your hands and squeezing it through your fingers. When mixed well, I patted it all into a big ball and stuck it in the fridge for an hour so we could go vote, and the time chilling seemed to help firm it up well for forming into balls.

Pre-heat the oven to 375°, pour some olive oil in a cast iron skillet (or other pan that can transfer into the oven), put a bit more oil on your hands to prevent sticking, and form the meat mixture into balls, ping pong to golf ball sized. Turn the skillet to medium-medium high and when it's hot, put the meatballs on the pan. I got 26 balls from this mix, and they all just barely fit in the pan. Sear for 2-3 minutes, then use tongs to turn over. Sear another 2-3 minutes, then transfer the whole pan into a pre-heated oven for 25 minutes. Pull one out and cut into it to make sure it's done before taking the skillet out of the oven.

Serve over pasta with a tomato-based pasta sauce on top. I completely spaced out about the need for sauce (duh) until the meatballs had already started, so I threw together a super fast tomato basil sauce:

• 28 ounce can organic crushed tomatoes
• a ton of fresh basil leaves, diced (maybe about 2 cups loose leaves?)
• 1/2 large yellow onion, diced (the other half from making the meatballs - convenient!)
• 2-6 cloves of garlic, depending on taste (I used 7!), microplane grated (store-bought crushed garlic is acceptable, but fresh tastes better and it only takes like 10 seconds)
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 Tbsp olive oil

Mix the crushed tomatoes, olive oil and basil in a pot, heat on medium high. In a separate pan, saute the diced onions in olive oil for 5 minutes or so until translucent. Add to the sauce, along with the microplaned garlic and lemon juice. Simmer 15-30 minutes or so. Serve over the meatballs and pasta. NOM! Monkey and Unicorn both loved this dish, which was awesome. Both kids are rather carnivorous, but the great things about meatballs is that they're not JUST meat. Well, mostly, but I can at least pretend that the three shreds of zucchini they probably ate counts as a vegetable. Humor me.

Apple Muffins (Gluten-Free)

Monkey and I are on an experimental gluten-free diet but I'm unwilling to give up delicious baked goods, so I've been dabbling in gluten-free baking. It's surprisingly awesome! Several times a week, I try a different recipe that I make up or modify from a previous experiment, and about half the time they're decent. Monkey, though, never ate my most common concoctions -banana breads or muffins. Humph. Yesterday, I ran out of bananas so I decided to try apple instead and for once, he ate some! Woohoo! Unicorn loves them too. She saw them on the table while breastfeeding and immediately rejected me for the muffins. Sheesh.

Today's recipe:

• 2 apples, cored, peeled, shredded
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 c agave nectar
• 1/4 c ghee
• 1/4 c heavy cream
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 c Bob's Red Mill gluten-free baking flour
• 1 tsp xanthan gum
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt

Mix wet ingredients and the shredded apple in one bowl, dry ingredients in another. Combine, mix until blended. Divide into 12 paper lined muffin cups. Bake at 350̊ for 22 minutes.

This recipe turned out great, very moist but not dense. I tend to prefer less sweetness in my muffins (cupcakes are another story!) so these have a subtle sweetness from the agave and apple. To make it not gluten-free, just use regular wheat flour and omit the xanthan gum. And, I haven't tried it, but I'm guessing that substituting softened butter for the ghee would work about the same. Next time, I'll add 1/4 c applesauce for extra moisture. I meant to, but we were out. Dang.

Steak and Potatoes, Baby!

Who doesn't love a big, juicy porterhouse steak? Okay, vegetarians, vegans, raw foodists, etc. Never mind. WE love a big, juicy porterhouse steak. We REALLY love the porterhouse at Peter Luger Steakhouse, legendary den of incredible meat and gruff waiters in Brooklyn. But, that's a 45 minute drive and $150 (cash only!) while child wrangling, so we make do at home. This 2+ pound, 2" thick beauty was rubbed with only olive oil, salt and pepper, and seared 6 minutes a side in a cast iron skillet. It then popped into the preheated oven for another 2 minutes. Perfect medium rare. Served with dutch oven potatoes and sauteed baby spinach with garlic, and a delicious red wine shallot butter, this meal is luscious and hearty. Unfortunately for us, Monkey and Unicorn LOVE steak. Soon we'll have to buy two! Monkey couldn't get enough and I've never seen Unicorn eat so much in one sitting. She dropped a record low number of pieces on the floor (sorry, kitty). Even a 7.5 month old knows good steak!

Dutch Oven Potatoes

• 1 onion, diced
• 4-5 cloves garlic, minced
• 5 small potatoes, cut into chunks
• 4 Tbsp butter
• salt & pepper to taste

Melt 1 T butter in the dutch oven. Cook onions 5 minutes or so until translucent. Add potatoes, garlic and remaining butter. Mix together, press down, cover, cook on medium-high for 15-20 minutes, stirring and mashing down every few minutes, then turn heat down to medium and cook covered another 20 minutes or so.