Ragu

This weekend spawned a few different reasons for me to do a big cooking day:
1 - I'm leaving on a business trip for a couple days. I like to try to leave J with some foods to eat so that he doesn't do what I do when I'm home alone: eat fast food or canned food;
2 - A co-worker's son was in the ICU earlier this week and people have been signing up to bring her food while she's in the hospital. Although they actually asked me to wait until two weeks from now to make anything because their schedule had filled for deliveries, I had already been mentally planning out what I was going to make and bring; and
3 - Our good friends, E & K, are having their kitchen redone so they are living on mostly take-out and I thought they could use some home cookin'.

So, my Saturday afternoon consisted of three long-cooking projects:
1 - Meat-sausage ragu
2 - Minestrone soup
3 - Chili

The ragu is definitely the most time consuming to prepare, though possibly the most rewarding to eat, so I started at the bottom of my list and worked my way up.

First, mince the mirepoix. Technically though, I'm not sure if they count as mirepoix since it was a 1:1:1, not the required 2:1:1.








Then prepare the meats. Starting from the top left that's pancetta, proscuitto, ground sirloin, sweet italian sausage filling, and ground pork. Mince up the prosciutto and pancetta. I should note that I made double the recipe.





First you add olive oil to your pot, then the mirepoix and saute til soft. Then you add all the meats and saute til everything is no longer pink. Then you add white wine and cook it down until almost all the wine has evaporated (pictured). Once that is done, add tomatoes and bring it down to the smallest simmer possible. This is actually hard for me. I turn it down too low and the flame blows out. Otherwise, it seems to bubble too much. After about two hours of stirring every 20 minutes, your ragu is done. I also made some fresh pasta today for E & K before delivery. Yum!

Here is a picture of my minestrone: water, some homemade chicken stock, onions, carrots, celery, zucchini, cabbage, green beans, and parmesan rinds.






And here is my chili: ground sirloin, onions, beer, pinto, kidney, and great northern beans, chili powder, and pepper.







Now, time to wrap some bacon around the quail I bought yesterday, slather them with a honey mixture and toss them into the oven.