back to basics

Last night I sampled my bolognese. There was some leftover from the batch I made for gifts, and I wanted to accomplish two things by reheating some of the sauce for myself.

First, I wanted to make sure it tasted good! I followed Anne Burrell’s recipe (found on foodnetwork.com) instead of my own cooking method, so I wasn’t sure how things would end up tasting. I tried her recipe once before with not so good results. She indicated to heavily salt the dish in the first couple of steps, but the end result for me was that my pasta sauce tasted like a salt block. I had to throw it away.

This time, I seasoned the dish as I would season any other sauce I was making, and I was very pleased with the results. I will definitely make it again, because it’s a very versatile sauce (you can toss it with cooked noodles or with penne for a baked pasta). You have to figure that any sauce that cooks for 5-6 hours has to taste great!

The other reason I wanted to sample the sauce yesterday was so I could finish the instructions to include with the gift basket. This sauce is very, very thick. I needed to have an idea of how much pasta water would have to be retained, so I could properly instruct my family how to create their own dishes from this sauce.

I think they will be happy. I don’t see any of them ever making this on their own, but that’s okay - that’s what they have me for!

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