Brown food
Update: All the “looks tastey” comments urge me to boast of new camera equipment. For Christmas, I got kate a Nikon Zoom lense with vibration reduction . It is responsible for brown food and all the hawk pictures. The VR features is awesome. One doesn’t need a steady hand when there are 3 gyroscopes in the lense to take that quiver out. Sweeeeeet.
I’ve been reading a book called Heat and the author makes constant mention of “Ragu” which by the way has very little to do with the red stuff in the jar. He also has a cute little bit about Tuscan food and how it has so many shades of brown.
Seeing as I’m getting over a cold, I had a lot of time on my hands, so I endeavored to make something Italian that took at least a half day to cook. I picked a Ragu Bolognese. It lacks mention of how much stock to use so I blended in a Mario Batali recipe (halfway down the page) which let me feel good about substituting pancetta for the ham and bacon. I invented a lot of steps, so I wouldn’t say I followed either recipe. I did discover a can of tomato sauce in my cabinet which expired in 2005. It must have moved twice to be that far gone.
The hard part was getting the red wine on a Sunday here in Colorado. Liquor stores aren’t open and grocery stores don’t carry wine. It turns out that if you buy a bottle and are served one glass, you can take the rest home with you. It involves re-corking and lots of masking tape. Anywho, 3 hours later we had a very savory spaghetti bolognese and it was pretty good. Now it’s time to finish off that bottle of wine.
Nice – where did you get your take-out bottle?
It was that wine and coffee bar in the King Soopers plaza at Drake and Timberline.
Hm. Ragu. I distinctly remember canned food called Ragu that was available in Germany when I was a kid. It had the smell and consistency of dog food. Never could bring myself to eat that stuff. Your creation looks much more appetizing!
That looks excellent. All those meats. Now you’ve got me thinking pasta and meat bolognese. If only I had time and ingredients. I suppose I could construct some frankenfood from a whim and a pan. Since I am the only eater, the eats need not always be good.
That was a nifty way to acquire wine. In California, wine is available all the time, but I seem to think that there are issues with taking an open wine bottle to go. Our waiter once let us do it so long as we were stealthy about it. I think there are concerns about the open container law, but a wine bottle mummified in masking tape is hardly open… Ciao.
Oh, man, that looks good. I’m all about the meat. So, did you end up using the 2005 tomato sauce or not?
Nope. To avoid a trip to the store, I used the Batali version which was tomato paste and broth, which I had on hand.
The excellent food photo was done with Kate’s new zoom lense… I’ll append the entry. She needs some credit for making it look so good.