whine & dine

In my previous post, I mentioned that I’m not a fan of tomato based sauces. That’s not entirely accurate. While I don’t really like them as the sauces for my tagliatelle or linguine, I’m quite a big fan of baked dishes that have a nice red or meat sauce in them. Shepherds and cottage pie (though those technically aren’t red sauces either), lasagne, and tomato-based ragùs are all welcome on my plate, as long as they don’t go with noodles, for some strange reason.

I’ve been craving lasagne for a couple of weeks now. And I valiantly tried to assuage this craving with a picnic lunch one weekday, having ordered lasagne from the city super deli counter. It didn’t really work. Then as I was walking through the aisles of sogo’s supermarket section in Causeway Bay, I saw a packet of rigatoni and had an idea.

The base of this pasta bake was a relatively quick meat sauce which starts with a soffrito of celery, onions and carrots, sweated and lightly caramelized with some cubed and browned pancetta. I then browned the mince (a mixture of pork and beef), seasoned it well and threw in a smattering of herbs – both fresh and dried. The soffrito was then returned to the pot along with some tomato paste, a tin of peeled plum tomatos, a glass of red wine and a little chicken stock. Then I let it simmer away for about 45 minutes while I went to play a little guitar hero. It was quickly finished off with a little milk and cream, after which I stirred in some fresh basil, letting it wilt from the residual heat.

I then made a white roux of butter and flour, and gently whisked in half a litre of milk that had been infused with bay leaf, thyme, garlic and an onion studded with cloves. Grate in a little nutmeg and stir through some parmesan and that was ready to go.

Assembly was the fun part though. Half the white sauce was mixed with a little wilted spinach and laid at the base of a buttered dutch oven. Over that went a third of my meat sauce, and then I stood over my pot cursing my bright idea for the next 35 minutes while I painstakingly stood all 500g of that pack of rigatoni upright in the sauce. (The photo breaks were really more for my back to get a rest than to blog!) Then I ladled over the rest of the meat sauce, pushing it down into the pasta tubes, smeared the rest of the white sauce over, and topped it off with the motherload of grated cheese (mozarella first and parmesan on top), and sprinkled a few basil leaves over it. The whole thing went, covered, into a moderate oven for an hour, and then I let it brown for the last 10-15 minutes uncovered, before scooping it onto plates and chowing down.

It was a pretty awesome dinner, if I say so myself – rustic, delicious, and a one-pot meal. And after serving 4, I even had enough leftovers for a couple of midnight fridge runs. :)