Taste Memories

Comfort in a Bowl

I'd wager that most people's hit list of rib-sticking foods does not include Brussels sprouts. Frankly, it should. I owe this extremely useful piece of knowledge to the folks at Maxine's, an absolute little gem of a restaurant in Girdwood, Alaska. My Mother-in-Law kindly took us there on our recent visit, on a night where the mercury dipped well below negative thirty. It was an evening for comfort and warmth, so I opted reflexively for the duck confit. It was a lovely rendition, but, truth be told, I was even more beguiled by the Brussels sprouts gratin it came with. Studded with bacon and veritably oozing with cream and cheese, this was admittedly not a dish for the faint of belly. And yet the grassy Brussels sprouts somehow kept the whole thing in check. I'm rather a sucker for austere characters in decadent garb, so I was totally charmed. I've been daydreaming about this ever since.

It was just the thing for that night, and it was just the thing tonight, too – especially since I got stuck in a snowstorm coming home from my first (exciting but rather hectic) day back at grad school. Of course, I could hardly duck back into Maxine's and beg them for a bowlful, but that's where a taste memory comes in handy: I was able to recreate the dish with great success my first time around. Next time around, I might add a little garlic to the onion during its last minute or so of cooking; I might also toss in some shrimp; and I might serve this over a fluffy bed of white rice instead of spaghetti. But there will be a next time. For, needless to say, this was just what I needed after a 7am start, a bunch of meetings, and a serious train delay: namely, comfort in a bowl.

 

Spaghetti with Caramelized Brussels Sprouts, Bacon and Cream

Ingredients:

6oz center-cut bacon, diced

1 onion, diced

16oz Brussels sprouts, peeled, washed, and halved

½ cup light cream

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

A handful of parmesan cheese, grated

A handful of flat-leaf parsley, rough chopped

Black pepper

8oz spaghetti, to serve

 

Method:

Place a skillet over high heat, and sauté the bacon until it is golden and crispy (about 5 minutes).

Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon, and place on paper towels to drain. Reserve most of the fat, leaving about a teaspoon behind.

Lower the heat to medium, and sauté the onion until it is soft and golden (about 5 minutes). Set aside the onions.

Add the Brussels sprouts, cut-side down, and let them sit without stirring, until they are nicely caramelized (about 5 minutes).

Add the cream and Worcestershire sauce to the skillet, and simmer the mixture for a few minutes, or until the Brussels sprouts are sufficiently tender.

Remove the skillet from the heat, and stir in the parsley and a few good grinds of black pepper. Now add the spaghetti to let the noodles soak up a bit of the cream sauce. Serve immediately.

 

Serves 2, generously.

Old Faithful

To say that I've been in a cooking slump of late wouldn't be quite accurate, but I've hardly been bursting with culinary ideas, either. Venturing over black ice to get to the grocery store is not an appealing prospect at the moment, especially considering the uninspiring winter produce which I know awaits me. So I find myself making the same recipes time and time again, which are mostly the kinds of things I'd scarcely think to write about. But sometimes the most unprepossessing of dishes can be uncommonly satisfying and handy, which brings me to this little pasta sauce.

Got butter? Got an onion? A head of broccoli? Some kind of stock? Some kind of cream? A bit of cheese? And a packet of spaghetti? Then a fabulous dinner is but fifteen minutes away. What you'll end up with is a lush celadon-colored puree in which to swathe your pasta. The sauce is quite mild, but the broccoli lends just enough of a bracing edge here to keep things interesting. I like to add a sprinkling of red pepper flakes at the end, for color and zip and sizzle. I imagine some toasted breadcrumbs would also be fantastic in their place.

The other nice thing about this recipe is that, like most of those in my regular rotation, it's subject to myriad promising variations. You can add some garlic to the onion (for the last minute or so of its cooking time), or you can fry the onion in bacon fat. For that matter, some actual bacon in this is delicious too, although I'd go easy on the cream and cheese in that case, lest the dish become excessively rich. My favorite rendition of all involves adding some nice oily black olives to the sauce at the very end (after pureeing the broccoli). It's hard to go wrong with this, really. Humble it may be, but still too good not to pass along.

Broccoli pasta sauce

Ingredients:

1 tsp unsalted butter

1 onion, diced

½ tsp kosher salt

2 large heads broccoli, cut into florets

3 cups vegetable stock

¼ cup light cream

¼ cup parmesan cheese, grated

Spaghetti, to serve

 

Method:

Add the butter to a large pot over medium heat.

Sauté the onion with the salt until soft and golden (about five minutes).

Add the broccoli florets, and stir them around a bit.

Add the stock, and bring the mixture to a boil.

Boil the broccoli for 5 minutes or until the florets are soft.

Blend the soup thoroughly with a stick blender (or in an upright blender).

Stir in the cream and cheese, and taste for seasoning.

Serve over pasta.

Legacy

There is an unspoken rule in my family. Whenever someone is sick, sad, or otherwise in need of solace, it is incumbent on us to spend the afternoon making our special bolognaise sauce for them. The recipe is not a family secret, exactly, but it has been perfected by my Mother and Father for the duration of their married life (over twenty-five years now). It is rich, comforting, and deeply satisfying, and is by far the best bolognaise I have ever tasted. A whiff of it bubbling on the stove takes me right back to the weekend afternoons of my childhood, since that was often when Mum or Dad would cook up a batch.

We'd eat it over spaghetti in the evening, and the sauce would swathe the noodles with its sticky, savoury, meaty juices. As a child, I would make spaghetti sandwiches out of it, preferably on soft white bread lavished with butter. It was what Dad made for me after my horse threw me off right in the middle of a dressage test when I was twelve; it was what Mum brought to me when I was nineteen, living alone, and struggling to find time to cook for myself during a particularly gruelling exam period; it was what I served to my exhausted parents and sister when they got off the plane all the way from Australia last year. No matter how inauthentic or how unfashionable it might be, this is the recipe in my repertoire that I treasure the most.

Spaghetti Bolognaise

 

Ingredients:

 

1 tbsp olive oil

2 large onions, finely chopped

1 lb baby carrots, finely diced (I like to do this by hand, so some little carrots pieces remain visible in the finished sauce)

1 head celery, finely chopped

1 tsp kosher salt

6 cloves garlic, smashed

1 lb uncured unsmoked streaky bacon, finely diced

5lb ground beef (about 90% fat)

2 * 28 oz cans crushed tomatoes

1 * 28 oz can diced tomatoes

12oz can tomato paste

2 cups red wine

6 bay leaves

1 bunch curly parsley

1 large handful basil, cut into thin chiffonade strips

 

To serve:

spaghetti

parmesan

butter and lemon zest for the pasta (optional)

 

Method:

 

Add the olive oil to a large, heavy-bottomed Dutch oven (with at least a 7-quart capacity) over medium-high heat.

 

Add the onions, celery, and carrots, and the kosher salt. Let the soffrito soften but not brown for about 10 minutes, and then add the garlic for a few seconds, before turning off the heat.

 

Meanwhile, fry the bacon in a skillet over high heat, until it is quite crispy (about 10 minutes).

 

Drain the fat from the skillet (you can leave a little of it if you want the sauce to have a more pronounced bacon flavor, but I get rid of it all), and add some of the beef to it (about 1/3 of it).

 

Brown the beef in 3 - 4 batches over high heat, mashing it with a large fork to break up any clumps. This step is hugely important - nobody likes lumpy bolognaise. I also use a potato masher at this stage to help declump, which is effective although unorthodox.

 

Then, add the bacon and browned beef to the soffrito, and stir in the tomatoes, wine, and bay leaves. Bring the mixture up to a slow boil, and simmer, covered, for at least 2 hours (preferably longer). Stir it occasionally, and add a little stock mixture or water if it looks dry. You should taste it and adjust the seasoning about halfway through the cooking too.

 

Next, uncover the Dutch oven and let any small pockets of liquid in the bolognaise evaporate. The sauce should be extremely thick and the ingredients well-integrated, at which point you can take it off the heat and start making the spaghetti.

 

While the spaghetti cooks, finely chop the parsley in a food processor (or by hand). Add the parsley and the basil to the sauce, and give it a final taste for seasoning.

 

I like to dress the cooked spaghetti with a knob of butter and a little lemon zest (although I suspect my Father, very much the traditionalist, would not approve) before topping it with a generous amount of bolognaise sauce. In my family, we serve the pasta and sauce unmixed, since this leaves the individual diner to adjust the proportions of their meal to suit their tastes. But do as you will.

 

This makes an enormous quantity, about 5 quarts. Feel free to reduce the amount, but I prefer to make it in bulk because it freezes incredibly well and is extremely versatile. It is delicious over any kind of pasta, in lasagne or pasta bakes, over mashed potatoes, grilled eggplant, baked potatoes, or even in subs.