Slow food express - Fusilli with Rich Meat Ragù

Sundays are my favorite day to cook - I get the morning to work out, pick up what I want from the grocery and go to town for the afternoon in the kitchen. Ideally, this would be time for me to execute "slow food" recipes where you take your time to build delicious hearty meals from scratch and let time-intensive technique and methods take over. Somehow, my Sundays rarely afford me that luxury.

Take this past weekend for instance. I got up late on Sunday (10:30am) struggled to get my breakfast in, sampled the Sunday New York Times and slugged my way into the gym. At that point, it was already pushing 3pm (time flies when you're slow) and I still needed to do my French lesson, cook dinner and make a weak attempt to catch up on some work after being in New York for the better part of last week. Further, J the BF had a flight at 9pm, so dinner needed to be served promptly by 7 in order for him to get to the airport in time for his flight.

Long story short, I needed to do a shortcut Sunday dinner. The New York Times Magazine featured a story on "Slow Food" which proclaimed that the secret to making the perfect ragù is time - time to let the meat and vegetables brown and brown and brown again concentrating the flavor and giving you a rich deep pudding-like sauce. My two favorite quotes from the article were:

"Brown food taste good" and
"Crud and scrape . . . crud and scrape."

You have to just read it to get it, but I didn't have time for all the crud and brown and whatever, but a rich hearty meat sauce and pasta was what I was hankering for. Instead, I turned to this recipe for Spaghetti with Rich Meat Ragù in Food and Wine. I subbed Fusilli (which I had on hand) and added a splash of cheap red wine as I had a hard time imagining this sauce with no wine - Ragùs need wine, don't they? Drunk harlot sauces that they are! I also tried to give the meats time to sufficiently brown and did a couple of rounds of "crud & scrape" before I gave up and just had to finish the devilish sauce.

All in all, took about an hour (vs. about 3 hours for a traditional version) and the hint of rosemary made it extra fab. I enjoyed it with a side of baby spinach wilted with garlic, olive oil, and Gorgonzola cheese plus a glass of Big House Red wine. When I have one of those fantasy Sundays, I'll try the slow crud and scrape version. I want to experience this brown food business.

Gourmet Convenience

In an effort to do more cooking at home to stem our spiraling restaurant meal expenditures, I've been relying more on the type of convenience food products by which I make my living marketing to the masses. Here are a few highlights of things that have proven indispensable recently (none of which are manufactured by my employer):

Big Bags of Quick Frozen Chicken Breasts: My local Trader Joe's has great prices on bags of frozen chicken fillets. On Sunday or Monday night, I'll throw them in a bowl of cold water for about 30 minutes to thaw, drain and sprinkle them with kosher salt, fresh ground pepper and ancho chile powder and broil them on high for about 6 minutes per side. I throw them in the fridge and use them for quick protein boosts after my work-outs, chop them up to throw into tacos, pasta sauces and salads or whatever.

Boxed Risotto: I've discovered these delicious Lundberg Risotto mixes that cook up in about 20 minutes that are hearty and elegant enough to jazz up a simple oven roasted salmon or pan seared pork chops. Just toss up a simple spinach salad and you've got instant fine dining.

Stuffed Pasta: Somewhere during that Atkins/South Beach madness, I forgot how much I enjoyed a simple plate of refrigerated ravioli or tortellini finished with a nice chunky rustic tomato sauce or gorgeous pesto toss. I've rediscovered how easy it is to buy these vacuum packed boxes of filled pasta and keep them in the freezer for whatever, whenever. Again, Trader Joe's to the rescue for dinner tonight when I took some fire-roasted veggie stuffed ravioli from my freezer, boiled it up and tossed it with Trader Joe's jarred vodka sauce (studded with chunks of pre-cooked chicken breast). I accompanied it with some frozen french-style green beans with slivered almonds. Dinner took 15 minutes to cook up and went over very well.

Better Than Boullion: The blow-hard celebrity chefs and Alton Brown tell you "if you're going to use boullion, you might as well use water." Not true. My BF's mom turned me on to these refrigerated jarred concentrated paste-style bases that comes in chicken, beef and other proteins. Just a tablespoon of this stuff in a quart of boiling water opens up a world of fast gourmet possibilities from decadent rice to luxurious sauces. I don't waste my time with canned/boxed broth where there's always extra to throw out anymore.

I'm finding that by just putting the right things in my pantry and freezer, I'm able to throw together some fittingly high-end meals without letting my weekly grocery budget stretch into the triple digits. I get my new meal plan from my trainer soon, so we'll see how long this affordable trend lasts. The protein shakes are already chilling in the fridge . . .