Just another weeknight...

Handcut pasta with braised lamb shank ragu.

This is something I haven't made in over a year and it was long overdue. The ragu took about 5-6 hours of cooking time with about four of those hours braising the lamb shanks and another hour and a half reducing it the braising liquid which would become my sauce. The lamb was first seared to begin the process of building the flavors for the ragu thanks to the maillard effect.

If there is too much fat in your pan after the searing, feel free to pour some out leaving about a tablespoon or two left to saute your aromatics. After the lamb was removed from the dutch oven, onions and garlic went in with a healthy pinch of salt and pepper. As the onions cooked they also released some liquid which helped to deglaze the bottom of the dutch oven. After the onions have softened and are translucent I put in about a cup and a half of red wine. I let that reduce by about half. Next went in a couple of large cans of whole peeled tomatoes, my favorite being Muir Glen. As you bring that up to temperature start breaking up some of the tomatoes with your spoon. Then return the lamb shanks and if you need more liquid add some water until the lamb is just covered with liquid.

Next I bring it up to where it is just about to boil and then throw it into a 295 degree oven, uncovered. The reason I keep it uncovered is two-fold. First, I need to reduce the sauce anyway so if I keep the lid off then it will slowly reduce while the lamb braises. The second reason is because with the lid on it increases the pressure in the cooking vessel and as those of you who remember high school physics will recall an increase in pressure results in an increase in temperature. So putting the lid on could increase the temperature from your desired 295 to something higher which could result in dried out meat.

It stays in there until the lamb is tender and falling off the bone. This will probably take you a few hours. Typically what I do after I get to that point is I turn off the oven and let everything sit in there together until it cools. The meat will continue to braise as it slowly cools, plus at the end you will be able to pull the meat off the bones without burning off your fingers.



The marrow that was once inside those bones is now part of the sauce which will help to give it body and richness.

After the lamb has been removed and shredded, the braising liquid, which is really just a tomato sauce, is slowly reduced on the stovetop until it gets to the saucy consistency you desire. This can take about an hour and a half, more or less, depending on how much water you needed to add in the beginning.

While it's reducing we started making the pasta by using Thomas Keller's pasta dough recipe from the French Laundry cookbook. You'll have to tweak it depending on the conditions in your kitchen at the time. It was really dry in our kitchen so a little more liquid needed to be added to the dough to bring it all together.



After resting for a little while we portion out the dough and begin rolling it into sheets.



After the sheets are rolled out I divide them into long sections.



The sections are then rolled up like a scroll of paper and then cut into pappardelle, which happens to be my favorite pasta.





Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, salty like the sea, and throw these guys in. They won't take very long to cook so hopefully your sauce is ready. Oh yeah, about that sauce, after it gets to the saucy consistency you want fold, in your shredded lamb shanks and bring everything back up to simmer.



When your pasta is ready toss it with the sauce and use a little of the pasta water if necessary. Most of the time I'll do this in a large pan on the stove over a medium heat because as the pasta continues to cook with the sauce it'll absorb the sauce. If you're doing it family style throw it all into a big bowl (sorry I didn't wipe down the sides of the bowl before shooting the picture).



Or just plate it up.



I like to top mine with a little pecorino because a lamb ragu with a sheep's milk cheese just seems to make sense. Enjoy it with a nice glass of chianti or sangiovese or whatever other red wine you like.

Blue

This really rich blue is my favorite color for the spring. It might not really come across here in this little box but it's a color that reminds me of bright sunny days with clear blue skies. That's definitely something that you need to be reminded of when February rolls around in Seattle.



Since it's such a rich and bright color I think it'll be more evident as a complimentary accessory as opposed to the main show when it comes to clothing. A little flash of blue popping out between the cuffs of your pants and your shoes or a bright scarf to keep you warm during chilly spring evenings. You can see those being pulled off extremely well on the Sartorialist's site. For the bold I think it would make a great color for a light cashmere sweater or a short sleeve polo.

I already have some of the bright blue socks, now if only the sky will follow my lead.

Winter in New England

We just got back from a cold week in New England. Even though we complain about the rain here in Seattle, I'd definitely take that over the 9 degree temperatures and -6 degree windchill. But we knew what we were getting into when we booked our tickets on a whim. Thanks to JetBlue's 9 hour sale to celebrate their being named the official airline of the Boston Red Sox we got a super sweet deal. Our flight out was surprisingly empty and I'm sure a part of that had to do with the lack of vacationers heading out to Boston in February. But another contributing factor had to be the economy with fewer business and leisure travelers.

After landing in Boston we headed back to my sister's place in Somerville to take a quick nap and visit her cat Phoebe before heading over to Brookline to have brunch with the Gleckels. Missy and Jessie officiated our wedding this past September and their trips back home just happened to overlap with ours. We met up with them and their parents at Zaftigs in Brookline so Jessie could get one last whitefish salad before heading down to Ethiopia for 6 months. After brunch and saying our goodbyes we headed down to Rhode Island to visit my parents for a few days.

For some reason I was a little surprised at the amount of snow that was on the ground when we got to Lincoln. Living in Seattle the past ten years has conditioned me to thinking when the roads are clear then there will be no snow elsewhere and if there is snow on the ground it'll only be an inch or so. When we pulled up to the house I grew up in I was a little astonished that there was at least seven or eight inches on the ground.



The next day the weather was quite a bit warmer with the highs in the mid-40s. Because snow was in the forecast for upcoming couple of days we decided to get out of the house and try to take a walk along the Blackstone River. Since I've moved out of RI a new trail has been built along the river that people now use to walk and bike throughout the year. Unfortunately for us, the trail was covered with snow and slush and we spent most of the walk staring at the ground making sure not to slip instead of looking at the surroundings.





Like many towns in Rhode Island, Lincoln has a history of mills and the mill towns that were built to house the workers. My town is made up of a number of smaller villages with mine, Albion, built up around the old mill on the Blackstone River.





At one point this mill made American Tourister luggage before closing down. If you happened to own an American Tourister suitcase in the 80s, chances are it was made here. It was then resurrected as condos in the mid-90s and was the first mill to do so in Rhode Island. In addition to old mill houses and a very small New England post office that closes every day for lunch we have a traffic dummy (aka buoy aka light) that was erected in 1932 over the old well that was once used by the residents of Albion.



After our aborted walk we then headed down to Providence to putter around the Brown area where Kristen picked up the book "You Know You're in Rhode Island When...: 101 Quintessential Places, People, Events, Customs, Lingo, and Eats of the Ocean State." This is when we decided that we would need to introduce her to some quintessential Rhode Island experiences such as a coffee cabinet, a wiener, Papa Gino's pizza, duckpin bowling, and Del's lemonade. Since she had already tried coffee milk before there wasn't a need for her to sample it again, even though the Autocrat factory is situated in my town. Kristen also got to learn the difference between a milkshake, a frappe, and a cabinet. If you aren't from Rhode Island and order a milkshake don't be surprised if you don't get what you were expecting.

Unfortunately the weather didn't hold out and the only thing she got to try was some Papa Gino's pizza. We weren't able to venture out for a wiener, cabinet, or duckpin bowling and it just wasn't the right season for Del's. We also had planned on visiting the Culinary Archives and Museum at Johnson and Wales, but we'll have to save that for our next trip out.

We then made our way back up to Boston to hang out with my sister for the last couple of days. Luckily the roads were clear and dry so the drive up was no problem at all after getting 3-4 inches of snow the day before. If this was Seattle the roads would be covered with packed snow and ice for days afterward. After getting into Boston we grabbed a bowl of ramen in Porter square before jumping on the T to Davis square where we stopped for some coffee and hot chocolate at our favorite cafe in Somerville, The Diesel Cafe.

Following that brief respite to warm up we putzed around Davis Square a little bit more before heading over to Sacco's Bowl Haven for a little candlepin bowling. Sacco's is an old school candlepin bowling alley that was pretty empty when we got there with some folks in the back playing pool.





It was probably for the best that there weren't other people around because it was the first time I had been candlepin bowling in probably a decade and a half and the first time Kristen had ever candlepin bowled. I'm not sure if my sister had been candlepin bowling before, but if she had it was probably a long time ago. For those who have never experienced candlepin before, it is a much different game than ten pin bowling that most people are familiar with. For one thing the balls are much smaller, 4.5" in diameter, and usually 2lbs 5oz to 2lbs 7oz. You also get three balls per frame instead of the two you get in ten pin. The pins are tapered at the ends and just under 3" wide at the middle. Now if you think it sounds like it's easier than ten pin because the ball and pins are smaller and you get three balls per frame you're wrong.



Evidence of this is the fact that there has never been a 300 game in candlepin and we weren't even close to challenging that with our attempts. Over the course of the 6 games we did show steady improvement with everyone getting at least one spare in each of our last couple of games. Our final game we decided to switch over to bowling lefthanded just so our right arms wouldn't be super sore the next day. Kristen was actually quite good lefty without much drop off between throwing righty and left.

In addition to all the fun of bowling, Sacco's was also decked out with a lot of old candlepin memorabilia including old candlepins, posters, and newspaper articles.





After a little debate we headed over to Kendall Square to catch a movie. When we got there we realized we had about an hour to kill so we down the street for a quick bite and drink at Hungry Mother, a tiny little restaurant that serves local and seasonal food. We only had some small bites since we didn't have a whole lot of time but we definitely wished we could have stayed longer and had a whole meal. It's on our list of places we need to go eat next time we're back in Boston. We concluded our day by watching Slumdog Millionaire, which I highly recommend.

The next day was freezing cold so we just took it easy. I was feeling a little under the weather so Kristen and my sister headed over to Harvard Square where they made the requisite stop at L.A. Burdick for hot chocolate and chocolate mice. They needed the hot chocolate since that morning it was only 9 degrees. They did come back with burgers from Mr Bartley's for lunch which did a good job of stuffing us before we had to head out for the airport.

It was great to be back in New England, even if it was only for a short time, but it was also really nice to come back to Seattle. It felt downright tropical when we stepped out of the airport and made a stop at the taco truck on the way home for late night dinner. I've been getting over my jet lag for the past couple of days and I'm not ready to head back to work on Monday.

A New Year and a Fresh Start

I know I've said before how it's been too long since I've blogged and how I will try to pick it up again, but this time I mean it. It's a new year so it's time to turn over a new leaf. But before I start posting new stuff I might as well recap the past year with photos.