Bolognese Sauce…

Let’s face it. Pasta is boring. The only function it really performs is to be a vehicle for sauce. Following that reasoning, the better your sauce, the better your experience. Tonight, we made a simple Bolognese. We used a recipe that didn’t contain any dairy, so it would last longer in the fridge.

Like many good recipes, this one starts with bacon.

In this case, cut up about 4 strips of bacon.. you’re looking for strips that are 1/2” wide or so….Next up, we have more familiar ingredients…. 2 cloves of garlic, and 1 medium onion.

We have plenty of pictures of chopping onions and garlic… so let’s fast-forward…

You’re going for a nice, fine chop…. minced if you’re counting….

Next step, onion, meet bacon…. toss the onion and garlic into a pan with the bacon and about 2 TBSP of Olive Oil.

While this is cooking… and the bacon is getting a little crispy… you’ve got some other stuff to chop… so, let’s talk about this for a second… We cook a lot.. so we have to chop a lot…. if it’s a julienne or other precise cut… you’ve got to do that… but… if it’s just “chop” or “finely chop”… they make a tool for that…

I won’t mention brand names, as companies seem to Google their names to see where their products are mentioned… but.. you can see above… this thing, while it has ridiculous name and commercial, works like a champ. Put stuff in, hit the handle a few times…. get chopped stuff out… that said.. go to your nearest place that sells “As seen on TV” stuff… pick one up.

So… chop about a half a cup’s worth of carrots, and another half a cup of celery. Also, get a half pound of sliced mushrooms down to a reasonable size… You don’t want to have a sauce that leaves you with a mouthful of just a single mushroom… so, break them in half or whatever it takes…

Now your onions should be starting to get translucent… your garlic should be starting to brown… and your bacon should be getting crispy…

If that’s all good… pull the pan off of the heat and put it to the side for a little while…

Get another pan on the heat and toss in a pound of 93/7 Lean Ground Beef and a half-pound of ground pork.

Do the brown-ing thing… chop it up, push it around… chop it and push it some more… after a while it’ll be chopped up and browned…. like some sort of crazy kitchen magic.

While you’re waiting, open a few cans and dump them into a bowl with your veggies….

You want 6-8oz of tomato sauce, 1/2 cup of chicken stock, and a 28oz can of whole plum tomatoes… grab the tomatoes and crush them with your hands… be prepared for them to squirt all over the place.

Sauce…

Maters….

1/2 Cup Broth / Stock

1/2 Cup Dry White wine…. …. now, go check on your beef.

Drain off the extra fat and get ready to add everything else into the pan with the meat…

So… now you’re down to one pot with everything in it.. the meats, the onions / garlic / bacon… all of the liquids and tomatoes and whatnot….

Toss in some salt and pepper and oregano and basil….

Stir it around… get it all infused and entwined and whatnot… then put the burner on simmer, put a lid on it and let it chill for about an hour… give it a stir every 15 minutes or so….

And it’ll be all wonderful after about an hour…. now, it’s time to go ahead and get the vehicle ready… so, cook up your pasta … really, whatever kind you like… this sauce can go on anything… if you’re feeling really lazy after all of this, you can just put the sauce on a few pieces of bread and chow down. …  We went for some multi-colored rotini.

mmmmmm let’s see that a little bit closer….

And there you go… that’s the sauce this week… we took the extra and put it in mason jars and tossed it in the fridge… it should keep for a week or two…. since it’s all mainly acidic…

Ginger Shrimp!

We made the basic version of this dish as an appetizer for our New Year’s get-together, and it went over rather well… meaning… my mom hovered over the bowl of shrimp and put down a half-pound while no-one was looking…

This is one that’s rather simple… but has a lot of possible things you can do with it… as such, we decided to make a stir-fry with the basic recipe tonight.

So… let’s get started.

Surprise surprise! Once again, we’ve got a picture of chopping garlic. Probably one of the most used pictures on our cooking blog… followed closely by frying bacon and melting butter.

In any case, you’re looking to have about 3 cloves worth of garlic minced up… and a few green onions…

Also, for our stir-fry recipe, we added some carrots and celery.

So… let’s get going. … You need to peel, de-vein, and de-tail about a pound of shrimp. Or… do like we do, and get the easy-peel that are already de-veined.

Get all of them peeled up… drop them in a pan… give them a spin of oil and get them cooking.

After they start to turn pink… add your garlic and 1 TBSP of ground ginger root.

The is the first time I’ve bought ground ginger root in a jar… I’ve gotta say, I’ll never buy fresh ginger root and grind it again…. that’s totally for suckers.

So, now that you’ve got that going.. let’s whip up some quick sauce.

1 TBSP White Sugar

1 TBSP White wine vinegar (I used Champagne Vinegar)

1 TBSP Soy Sauce

3 TBSP Ketchup

Mix all of the above together, and add a few red pepper flakes.

That’s it for the sauce….

Normally at this point, you’d add the sauce to the shrimp / garlic / ginger in the pan, let it get warmed up/thicken it up a little bit… and be done…

But.. since we were doing the stir-fry thing… I pulled the shrimp out of the pan, and tossed it into the sauce.

Then, in the same pan, I cranked the heat up to about med-high and tossed in the carrots and celery with 1/8th of a cup of the champagne vinegar…

Tossed the lid on, and let it soften up for a few minutes….

After a little while, there was a nice little crustiness on the bottom of the pan, so I deglazed it with some white wine…

Then I tossed in the green onion… let the white wine cook off…. and tossed the shrimp and sauce back in to finish it all off…

Biggity bam. that’s it…. that simple….

We had our with some awesome white rice from our rice-cooker.

Here’s the awesome picture ready serving that Virginia got…

 

and this is what mine looked like:

So… whether you just do the shrimp… or if you make it stir-fry and serve it over rice… it’s an awesome little recipe.. and pretty dang versatile…. so.. have at it.