Braised Beef Shank served with Linguine

Bonjour.

So lately I've been cooking lots of pasta, but I wanted to stray away from the typical sauce + noodles combination after cooking everything I've made recently. I also cooked a rigatoni all'amatriciana which was pretty good that I'll probably end up making a blog post about next time I make it.

So, last week I was at Fresh Market and any time they have meat on sale I try to get it. Paying full price for their meat is kind of ridiculous. They actually have skirt steak for 12 dollars a pound. Kill me now. So imagine my face when I saw they had beautiful looking beef shank for 5 dollars a pound! With a giant bone filled with delicious bone marrow just waiting to be scooped out! So maybe it's not that amazing of a deal because the bone probably weighs half a pound on its own, but that's flavor man. FLAVOR.

I approached this dish with no recipe, so my measurements might be kinda wonky, but who needs a recipe for cookin a big piece of meat. (that's the fun!!) I decided to serve this dish on pasta because when cream is added to the cooking liquid at the end, it becomes a pretty sick sauce. It makes it nice and thick, so at the end you have a tomato-ey, beef-y, cream-y, delicious-ly easy dinner. Although, mashed potatoes are equally as good, but I just didn't have any potatoes. Heh.

INGREDIENTS LIST:

• one beef shank, preferably one and a half pound or something like that
• two carrots
• two stalks of celery
• an onion
• three cloves of garlic
• beef stock
• red wine
• tomato sauce
• splash of cream

Ok this is going to be a really fast recipe, you can time me if you wish.

1. Preheat your oven to 375
2. Sear the beef on both sides in a well coated pan of olive oil on a higher setting.
3. Turn down the temperature a bit and pour all the vegetables in the pan and cook until they're slightly soft.
4. Make a well in the middle of the pan and place your beef back in there. Add a combination of 1:1:.5 of liquids, so thats about a cup of beef stock, a cup of red wine, and a half cup of tomato sauce.
5. Cook in the oven, covered, until it's fork cuttingly tender. About two hours.

This is a really simple dish and something that's okay to just walk away from for a while. Make a dish like this when you have homework to do or an awesome dog to play with. 

Bucatini - Two ways! Bucatini Carbonara and Bucatini All'Aglio, Olio, e Peperoncino

Bonjour mes amis! So I've decided to dub this week "Pasta Week" to excite my girlfriend because of her love for pasta. My last post was linguine, although it wasn't pasta week then, but I'll still count it!!!!

On my weekly trip to Fresh Market on my bike, I saw some cool looking pasta. It's called Bucatini and is a really thick pasta, but this is where it gets different. It has a hole in the middle! I decided to get a bag of this because I love trying new things. I figured this was a kind of pasta that could be used with nearly all sauces. The holes would soak up cream sauces and the large surface area of the noodle would carry oil nicely, too!

After watching an episode of No Reservations in Rome, I was inspired to make one of my favorite dishes: Spaghetti Carbonara. Contrary to popular belief, carbonara contains nooooooooo cream. Nearly all carbonaras you eat at a restaurant will make it some sort of belt busting creamy nightmare. Carbonara shouldn't be that, it should be a light dish with an exciting taste.

Ingredient list for Authentic Bucatini Carbonara:

• 1/2 lb of Bucatini
• Olive Oil
• Two ounces of Pancetta
• Two eggs
• Salt and pepper
• Parsley
• Half a cup of Pecorino Romano cheese, or parmesan.

Ok this is a really easy recipe. First, boil the noodles in liberally salted water. Once they're cooking, put some olive oil in a pan and start frying the pancetta at a med temperature. You don't want these frying up into little crisps. Keep an eye on them so they don't burn, it should be like bacon. In a separate bowl, combine the two eggs and cheese until they're melded into one. Once your noodles are done cooking, strain them, and pour them into the pan with the pancetta and a tablespoon or two of the pasta water. Then take it off the heat and pour your egg/cheese mixture. Yes the eggs shouldn't exactly be cooked and yes the yolks might be slightly raw, but what's the difference between a sunny side up egg yolk and this? Don't worry, it's not gross. It's delicious. After combined, plate the pasta before the eggs get a chance to solidify. Sprinkle parsley and salt and pepper on top.

For the next dish, I decided to tackle one of Italy's most basic dishes: Aglio e Olio. This is italian for garlic and oil. I also decided to knock this mother up a notch by roasting both my garlic and jalapeno pepper. It's really easy, actually. Take your garlic and cut the top off of the bulb so nearly all of the cloves are exposed. Put it in aluminum foil and then pour olive oil on top and close. For the jalapeno: just put it in aluminum foil with olive oil too, then close up. Roast these in the oven at 375 for about 35 minutes. When the garlic is done, it should be soft and spreadable and delicious.

Ingredient list for Aglio e Olio:

• 1/2 lb of Bucatini
• Jalapeno pepper
• Four cloves of roasted garlic
• Handful of Parmesan cheese
• Olive oil
• Red pepper flakes/salt/pepper

Boil your noodles in liberally salted water. Then put about three or four tablespoons of olive oil in a pan with four cloves of roasted garlic and half the jalapeno. Cook this at a low temperature so everything remains tender. When the noodles are done, strain them, and put them in the pan. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes and then toss. Plate with parmesan cheese and the other half the jalapeno. 

These recipes are extremely easy and extremely tasty. Good food doesn't have to be hard, it just has to be respected.

Linguine Fine with San Marzano Marinara

Pasta. One of god's innumerable gifts to mankind. A delicacy served far and wide. An ingredient so simple a caveman could make it, or a Geico gecko for that matter. What sets apart a plate of pasta from a plate of pasta is the ingredients.

Now I don't consider myself an Italian or anything like that, nor have I ever even met an Italian, but I do modestly consider myself knowledgeable on the subject after tasting the difference. One thing that I will be honest about is the fact that I HATE eating at Italian restaurants. I'm a cheap person, most people who know me know that, but I'm cheap because I have standards! Going to an "Italian" restaurant and paying 10 dollars for a plate of pasta that cost them 10 cents to make and tastes as good as a jar of Prego isn't exactly my cup of tea. There are hardly any real Italian restaurants that exist. It's disappointing that you can find ten wrongly made spaghetti carbonaras and no Osso Bucco, simple cocio e pepe, even the most basic risotto is hard to find.

That's why I've decided to make this post, it's ridiculous how freaking delicious a simple marinara sauce can be with good tomatoes. Next time you go and buy that premade sauce, do yourself a favor. Look for a can like this.

These, my friends, are San Marzano tomatoes. Straight from the source. No tomatoes you buy in the grocery store, nor no Food City/Kroger/anything else brand will taste anything like it. And the best part is a giant can is only 3 dollars! These tomatoes are perfect for anything that requires a tomato sauce and the best part is that you don't have to add ANYTHING (well maybe a little bit, but you'll see). These tomatoes are perfectly sweet and taste like heaven straight out of the can.

Now for this recipe I am not lying, it's this easy and simple. The key to Italian cooking is using fewer amount of ingredients for a much higher quality meal.
Here are the ingredients:

• One 28 oz can of San Marzano Tomatoes. (pureed, whole, anything is fine)
• Two cloves of garlic, minced
• Salt n pepper
• 1lb Package of Linguine Fine (any pasta is fine, but these looked kinda cool)
• Fresh Basil (dry is fine if you can't find fresh, but fresh is literally sinful in deliciousness)
• Olive oil
• Parmesan/parmigiano reggiano/pecorino romano

Open your can of tomatoes and if they're whole, mash them up. If they're pureed then leave em in the can. Mince two cloves of garlic and cook them in the oil until they release their aromas. Pour in the tomatoes and let cook at a light simmer, med low heat. Start cooking your pasta with a liberal amount of salt and then walk away. Ok don't really walk away, stir your sauce a bit and taste it, but all you need to add to it is basil to taste and salt and pepper to taste. That's it. Let it cook down until it's slightly thick, at least until it's not too watery anymore. Once your noodles are done, drain them except for a couple tblsp of pasta water and throw them in the pan with the sauce. Coat the noodles and let a little bit of the pasta water stay in the pan. This is because there is starch in the water and it helps thicken the sauce to coat the noodles better. Toss them around and serve with cheese on top. A 28oz can should be enough for a 1 lb package of noodles.

C'est magnifique. C'est glorieux. C'est delicieux. C'EST LE CIEL!!