This started from wanting to make the basic tomato sauce recipe from Josée di Stasio’s A la di Stasio. Then I got a little ambitious.
I decided to re-make the Kazakh Noodles from Beyond the Great Wall, but skip the stretching by hand step and the hanging (even if I’d had a clothes rack…). I also decided not to fling anything this time, though my floor in Newfoundland is probably cleaner than my floor in Montreal. I also wanted to use up some red wine and found a traditional tomato sauce recipe that called for brandy. I only had cognac. Not the end of the world, certainly. Finally, I decided to add ground lamb to the sauce.
Lamb Tomato Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, diced
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup red wine
1 28 oz can diced, crushed or whole tomatoes (purée them in the blender or food processor if they’re not already crushed or you want them more than diced)
sprinkle of sugar (optional, if you don’t use naturally sweet San Marzano canned tomatoes)
1/4 cup parsley
2 tbsp dried basil (only because I didn’t have very much fresh. I know, I know. Not good, but I did throw in the fresh basil that I had)
3 tbsp brandy (or cognac)
1lb ground lamb
First I fried the lamb in a skillet until it wasn’t pink anymore. Then I drained the excess fat. I know people are giving me dirty looks right now. Draining all the flavour, but it’s not completely true. Lamb is very fatty and I didn’t drain it all. Just enough. You can drain to your preference. You can even save the grease to sauté or roast other things in later. It doesn’t have to be wasteful. Lamb fat-roasted potatoes? Yes, I think so.
In a large saucepan I sweated the onions for 10 minutes, covered, in the olive oil over low heat. Then I added the garlic and fresh basil and cooked, covered, for 5 minutes more, making sure it didn’t brown. Apparently cutting into the cloves of garlic and removing the green germ (or sprout) makes the garlic less bitter, and for a sauce this is definitely good. I’ve never done it before, but it’s something to try. Browning also makes it more bitter, so keep the heat low.
In went the wine. Oh I love that part. Even if it’s not great wine, especially ifi t’s not great wine, it’s wonderful to toss it in and know that the sauce will be that much better. I let it reduce by half and then I added the can of tomatoes (no San Marzanos in Newfoundland), a pinch of sugar, the dried basil, most of the parsley, and the browned ground lamb. I decided on a whim to throw the whole thing into the slow-cooker on high for a few hours. This had to be better than just simmering it on the stove for 20 minutes. What about all those stories of pasta sauces cooking for hours and hours? I’d fake it with the slow-cooker. I let it cook until I wanted to eat (about 2 hours) and then added the rest of the parsley and 3 tbsp of cognac. Then I let it cook about 20 minutes more on high and finally turned off the machine. During the cooking time I made the noodles:
Kazakh Noodles
This made a whole lot of noodles. About 8 large servings.
3 1/2 cups flour (I used rice flour, fully knowing that the dough would not want to cooperate and would probably fall apart and hate me forever. My family’s digestion, on the other hand, would love me)
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup lukewarm water (my pasta-maker would disagree with this large amount, but my pasta-maker is also not in Newfoundland to berate me)
I stirred together the flour salt and eggs in a medium bowl. It’s easier to do it in a food processor but I don’t have one of those either. I also hate whisking eggs with flour. It gets stuck and is annoying to clean. My dough would not be fluffy and I was okay with that. I made a well for the water in the dough, poured it in and mixed it together with my large spoon. Then I gave up on the spoon and jumped in with my hands. Take that, egg. The recipe says if the dough is too stiff or too dry add more water, but there were no telltale signs of over-dryness, no small clumps forming in my pasta-maker, so I was left running blind and hoping that my dough would be okay. Then I did my horrible rendition of kneading for 3 minutes. The dough got cut into 4 pieces and rolled out with a rolling pin. What I was actually supposed to do was cut the dough into 8 pieces, leave them covered with plastic wrap for 30 minutes, and then attack each piece individually with the rolling pin, but I didn’t read that variation in the recipe until it was too late.
I rolled and sliced into fettucine-sized noodles with a very sharp knife. The only problem was the noodles broke easily, but as long as I handled them carefully when I tossed them into the boiling water it was fine. They were a bit thick and took about 8 minutes to cook even though the dough was fresh (they’re supposed to be ready when they rise to the top of the big pot of boiling water, but maybe rice flour doesn’t act quite the same?). Anyway, they got drained and rinsed with cold water to wait to be served with the lamb tomato sauce.
Bit of pasta on the plate, lots of sauce, side dish of steamed swiss chard and a green salad. Olive oil.
Chinese noodles, Italian tomato sauce and Australian lamb never tasted so good. The fun thing is you’d just think it’s fettucine in a tomato ragout. Sometimes I love culinary magic tricks.
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