Red Meat Sauce and Its Hearty Vegetarian Sibling

Turkey Antidote.  Meat Sauce.  There’s a vegetarian version here too. 

Make a big batch of the classic meat sauce and serve it family style over a platter of wide fettuccini noodles or sauce-catching rotini pasta.  With a generous green salad laced with shaved Parmesan and warm bread this is a satisfying transition out of turkey time. 

My version mixes classic Bolognese sauce recipes with a simple meat sauce packed with extra vegetables.  To make this more Bolognese-like, add the optional milk or cream at the end before serving.

House Meat Sauce
Makes 7-8 cups sauce

Ingredients
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
1 medium onion
8 oz mushrooms
1 zucchini
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds ground meat (any combination of beef, veal, pork and turkey)
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup milk
1 28 oz can tomato puree
1 28 oz can chopped tomatoes
2 tablespoons grated parmesan
1 teaspoon sugar or honey
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Optional: 1 cup cream or while milk



Method

1. 
Peel and coarsely chop carrots, celery and onion.  Place in a food processor and process to a very fine dice.  Put mixture in a large pot.  
2. Next, place roughly chopped mushrooms and zucchini in food processor and process to a very fine dice.  (By separating the harder and softer vegetables, you will not over process the mushrooms and under-chop the hard carrots.   You can also grate the carrots and finely chop the remaining vegetables by hand if you don’t own a food processer.)  
3. Add the mushrooms and zucchini to the pot and add vegetable oil.  Sauté over medium heat until vegetables are tender.  
4. Push vegetables to the side of the pot and add ground meats. Add a bit more vegetable oil if needed and cook meat, stirring occasionally until no longer pink.  
5. Add wine and cook for 2-3 minutes, then add milk and continue cooking another 2-3 minutes until most of the liquid is absorbed.  
6. Lower heat and add tomato puree and tomatoes plus remaining ingredients (except cream).  Cover and cook sauce on very low heat – barely a simmer- for 90 minutes.  Check sauce and stir as needed to ensure it is cooking on a low simmer.  
7. If adding cream/milk, stir in now and cook 5 minutes longer before serving sauce.

“Vegetarian Bolognese”
Omit the meats and double the amount of mushrooms and zucchini.  A small eggplant can also be peeled, diced and added (about 2 cups) during the sautéing period of the recipe.   I also like to add 1/3 cup ricotta cheese to the vegetarian version. 

Freeze cooled leftover sauce in portions that fit your household.  Reheat for another simple pasta night or use it in lasagna, over manicotti or stuffed shells. 

Note: Bolognese recipes rarely contain herbs or spices.  Add them if you like or serve the sauce with a handful of fresh, shredded basil on each plate.  

Stuffing Bread

This is the time of year I hear very personal recipes for Thanksgiving stuffings and dressings.  Yesterday I heard parts of a secret recipe with four types of mushrooms with sage and chives from the cook’s own garden.  Dried fruits are returning to popularity in some recipes and traditional sausage recipes now include chorizo and homemade ground meat blends.  Even winter squash and Brussels sprouts are squeezing into some family recipes. 

These rightly proud and sometimes secretive cooks often make their specialty a day ahead to keep guests guessing (and coming back for more).  I love the variety and we have our favorites too, an apple-sausage-pecan-cornbread number and from my family oyster stuffing.   But I also like to serve a more plain stuffing for plainer tastes at the table.  It’s a reminder that while we are a food abundant nation, dishes like stuffings and dressings were meal extenders that allowed us to serve more people and were often comprised of inexpensive and more available ingredients—bread, onion, celery—for example. 

The bread would have been homemade, day old and perhaps a bit too hard to eat out of hand.  In a broth and butter soaked stuffing, not a crumb would have been wasted.  These are hectic days but if you own a bread maker you can make your own very plain or secret ingredient version of the traditional turkey side with some homemade bread.  It seems a shame to labor over special ingredients and then mix them with store-bought, processed bread.  This week I am making a wheat and cornmeal loaf that will absorb all the savory flavors in my recipe.  If your recipe calls for a softer, less rustic bread seek out a recipe for a simple wheat bread made with egg and some milk (to soften the crumb) or potato bread made with either mashed potatoes or (real) potato flakes.

Wheat and Cornmeal Stuffing Loaf
Ingredients
1 cup water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
optional: 1/4 teaspoon each dried herbs (see bonus note below)
1 cup yellow cornmeal (I use a mixture of 2/3 cup finely ground and 1/3 cup coursely ground)
2 1/2 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Method

1. Place the ingredients in your bread maker in the order recommended by the manufacturer.  Set the machine to the regular baking cycle (light crust is there is that option).  
2. When loaf is ready, remove and cool completely.  Slice into cubes or tear into chunks and set on a tray to dry for several hours.  (You may speed this up by placing trays in a warm oven, below 200˚F for 30-45 minutes.)  
3. Cool bread cubes before storing in an airtight container until ready to use.  Store dried bread at room temperature 1-2 days or freeze up to 3 months.

Bonus: If your stuffing recipe has sage, thyme or another dried herb you can add a 1/4 teaspoon of each into this bread recipe.

Note:
In our family we still call it stuffing even though we cook it outside the bird these days. While the turkey rests we bake the stuffing and other side dishes in the hot oven.  This safer method allows the un-stuffed turkey to cook more quickly and the stuffing will also be fully cooked and hot in no time as well.  If you think you will miss the moistness the bird’s juices impart to stuffing cooked inside the bird, add some extra broth to your recipe before baking it in a separate covered dish and baste halfway through with some pan drippings.  You can also reheat stuffing in the microwave and finish it off in the  oven if you like a bit of a crust.

Pies-Pies-Pies

Tarte Tatin alongside the cast iron skillet it was baked in.

Earlier this fall I got a hot tip.  It came from a very reliable source over at a certain cable network.  Pies will be the next big thing.  Move over cupcakes. 

You may have already noticed the signs and not just because Thanksgiving pie season is upon us.  Whole slices of pie are suddenly finding their way into our smoothies.  They are getting baked into stunt cakes at the Reading Market in Philadelphia.  Popular pie flavors like apple, key lime and Boston cream pie have been flavoring our yogurt for some time now.

But the real thing has always been big around here. My family was in the pie manufacturing business when I was in high school and through osmosis I learned about Michigan’s cherry harvests and the educational needs of migrant workers’ children.   I helped my mother sort through pie filling recipes  destined to go on the package of the unbaked pie shell crust product. During the holidays we kids helped my parents deliver thank you pies to everyone who had helped us out the year before—especially the mechanics at the garage who kept my mother’s carpool station wagon alive (somehow).  

Later, I worked at Pillsbury’s advertising agency in New York City while they were developing their hugely successful Refrigerated Pie Crust product.   (We called it by its "code name," ARPC –all ready pie crust--- during the test marketing).  

One day, our small media planning team was asked to join a taste test in our company's kitchens.  Could tell the difference between three apple pies?  One was baked using the Pillsbury test product, one was baked with an all butter crust and one used a lard crust. The test product was good, more than good, as sales have shown these past 25 years.  Still, I was able to distinguish between the three and knew in a flash that the one everyone adored (and my foodie boss thought was made with butter) was the lard crust.  The test product came in a strong second and the butter crust was third. 

What’s special about a lard crust?  It creates those flakes we love and keeps a pie from feeling leaden in out tummies.  (These days many people use a half butter/half lard recipe to get both flavor and flakiness.) 

Despite my pie company formative years, the real reason I could identify the perfect flaky crust was that my godmother had taught me to make pie dough a few years earlier.  This was the pie we ate when we spent Thanksgiving or Christmas at her home.  One year I asked for the recipe.  She said, “No.”

This year's apple mincemeat pie, ready for the oven.  Note the streaks of white lard, visible in the unbaked crust.  Flakiness is good.

And after a breath said, “But I will show you how and then you can have the written recipe.”  

Turns out there’s a bit of technique involved.  It helps to feel the cool flour in your hands, see the cornmeal texture emerge between fat and flour, and intuit the amount of moisture in the air versus ice cold water in the measuring cup. It is tricky to describe but so easy once you've seen it done. 

So I’m afraid I'll have to stick with tradition.  No written recipe today—but one day I promise I will demonstrate how to make a perfect pie crust.  Or maybe there is someone special in your family who will show you the ropes.  For many of us, cooking together is one of the finest holiday traditions we know.  And whether you roll out your own dough or one from the dairy case, it’s hard to go wrong if you are in the kitchen with a loved one. 

If you’ve been taught by a master as I was, this may be the year to start making an extra pie for your teacher or to show someone else how to do it. 

Easy Roasted Fish

If, like me, you are adding more fish to your diet then you know its nice to have some quick recipes that taste hardy enough to get fans among the family.  Frozen fish fillets, like Pollack, defrost fast and roast well when placed over a bed of pre-roasted vegetables.  The steam from the vegetables helps the fish stay tender while the high heat gives the fish a rich finish.  You can use any combination of vegetables but this one with fennel, asparagus, mushrooms and red bell pepper creates a fragrant and savory foil for most white fish. 

Roasted Pollack over Fennel and Mixed Vegetables
2 servings, recipe doubles easily

Ingredients
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced
6-8 small mushrooms, whole
1 whole fennel bulb (anise) sliced
12-15 asparagus spears
1 tablespoon olive oil plus a little extra to drizzle on fish
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons fresh herbs: parsley, basil, tarragon, etc
4 (4-5 oz) Pollack fillets (fresh or frozen and defrosted)
1/2 lemon

Method

1. Preheat oven to 450˚F.
2. Toss vegetables with 1 tablespoon oil in a roasting pan.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  
3. Roast at 450˚F for about 20 minutes, stirring halfway through, until vegetables are cooked through and slightly caramelized.  
4. Lay Pollack fillets directly on roasted vegetables.  Sprinkle with a little additional olive and some lemon juice.  
5. Roast another 8-10 minutes, until fish is opaque and flakes when tested with a fork.  Serve fish and vegetables alone or over a bed of rice.

Other vegetable combinations to try:
Slightly Southwest: thinly sliced celery, carrots, onion and poblano peppers.  Finish with some parsley and cilantro.
Hints of Provence: tiny potatoes, grape tomatoes, olives, haricot verts. Finish with fresh thyme and rosemary.