Oh my! This sauce is out of this freaking world! I kid you not! Beyond the best meat sauce I can ever remember having! I can’t take any credit for it. This one is all ICE’s recipe and my classmate, Holly made it in our group. I helped dice the veggies and tasted it for seasoning. Does that count? I don’t mess with perfection. I just grabbed some before they added the homemade gluten-full pasta and heavy cream, packed it up and brought it home to finish with my own gluten-free pasta.
While cooking the pasta, I reheated the meat sauce and added in the heavy cream. In school, we learned Italians don’t load the pasta with sauce and top it with grated cheese. They just coat it lightly and add the cheese into the sauce, if there is any. Chef James also taught us to put the finished sauce into a saute pan and toss the cooked pasta into the pan with the sauce. This ensures it is coated evenly and keeps the pasta together. It’s also very important to save some of the pasta water in case you need to thin out your sauce a little at the end. I suppose I did a very un-Italian thing with this dish by adding some basil and shaved parmesan cheese on top. That was just to make it a little prettier for the pictures. Did it work? It tasted pretty damn good too!
Whether or not this is the most beautiful dish you’ve seen, it will definitely be one of the tastiest! The fact that I left the bolognese sauce overnight before putting it together probably even made it more delicious. Sauces like these always tend to develop more flavor over time.
We continued learning about the different regions of Italy this week. I really love Italian food but the pasta and bread complicated things for me a bit. Oh well. I brought in my own breadcrumbs for some of the dishes including an amazing branzino wrapped in prosciutto and some arab-inspired meatballs with pine-nuts and raisins. So good! Once again, my classmates rocked it in terms of always looking to adapt recipes any way they could to make them gluten-free. I actually started blogging about Life as a (Gluten-Free) Culinary Student on my school’s blog this week. I love that ICE is giving me the opportunity to spread the word about celiac and food allergies in the culinary community!
We’re starting the cuisine of Asia next week. I’ve always loved Asian food however, we don’t dine at Asian restaurants as a family since sesame, nuts and soy (gluten) are fundamental ingredients. I’m excited to learn how I can recreate those dishes at home with my own gluten-free and allergy-friendly staples. Stay tuned…
P.S. I was recently nominated for “Top 25 Foodie Moms” on Circle of Moms. No idea how it happened but you gotta imagine I’m pretty psyched to be included with this great list of food bloggers. You can vote for me every day here through June 4th (and by “can”, I mean “must”). Just kidding (not really).
- 2 oz Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 1 T Butter
- 1 Onion, diced small*
- 2 carrots, diced small*
- 2 celery stalks, diced small*
- 8 oz ground beef
- 8 oz ground veal
- 8 oz ground pork
- 2 oz Prosciutto, finely chopped
- 4 fl oz white wine
- 2 T tomato paste
- 16 fl oz veal stock
- 2 sprigs parsley
- 2 sprigs sage
- 2 sprigs thyme
- dash of ground nutmeg
- salt and pepper to taste
- 4 fl oz heavy cream
- 1 lb gluten-free pasta of your choice (I used bionaturae spaghetti)
- *You can pulse onion, carrot and celery together in a food processor. Just make sure it is smaller than the ground meat but not over-processed and mushy)
- Pre-heat sauce pan and combine olive oil and butter
- Once butter is melted, add the onions, carrots and celery. Cook until caramelized, about 10 minutes
- Add ground meats and prosciutto, making sure to break them up
- Cook until meats are browned
- Combine wine and tomato paste and add them to the saucepan. Simmer for about 3-4 minutes
- Add veal stock, parsley, sage, thyme, nutmeg, salt and pepper and bring to a low simmer
- Cook over low heat for approximately 1½-2 hours
- About ½ hour before sauce is finished, boil water for the pasta and add a good deal of salt to it (should taste like the ocean). Cook pasta and reserve some of the cooking liquid before draining it
- Remove the sauce from the heat and add in the heavy cream
- Toss the pasta with the sauce, adding some of the cooking liquid, if necessary, to break it up
- Serve and enjoy!
This sauce is amazing!! I made it for supper, and it was super easy to do! We tried a new brand of gluten free pasta, which wasn’t the greatest, but the sauce totally made up for it! I’m so stuffed. I had to finish my plate, even though I was really really full… there’s no way I was leaving a bite! Thanks again Jackie for your fantastic recipes so I can cook like a pro! There’s no need for mediocre food EVER!
Thanks, Therese! I’m so glad you liked it and I totally agree with you re: never having to eat mediocre food!:)