The Spaghetti Incident: Home-made Spaghetti and Meatballs

One of the things I am most proud of recently was the institution of a new family ritual I call “Date with Daddy.” As any parent knows, it’s difficult to spend a chunk of meaningful one-on-one time with 3 kids aged 10 and under. So I devised a plan in which each week one of the kids gets to spend an evening alone with me, doing whatever they want to do.

This way, we get a good 2-3 hours together, just by ourselves, doing fun things and hanging out together. I’m not a huge fan of the phrase “quality time”, but in truth, that’s just what it is. I’ve been rock climbing and ice skating, I’ve had movie dates; night-time swims, walks on the beach and even, just long drives with my kids. They love it and I’ve been given this great opportunity to simply hang out with them, doing the things *they* want and getting to know them better. Good idea, eh?

Maybe I’ll patent the idea…

One evening Jacob, my 10 year old son, and I came up with this crazy idea to make spaghetti and meatballs entirely from scratch. It was slightly ill-advised, as we started on a weeknight at about 6 PM and – without any advanced prep work – this took longer than it should have. We ate late, about 9:30 or so. But the results were great, we had a ball and even the girls came into the kitchen to hang out and watch.

In the future, I’d recommend making the sauce (or the meatballs, or the pasta) in advance, but otherwise this was the best pasta any of us had eaten in a very long time. Oh, and the kids LOVED mushing the meat around and making it into balls and seeing who could pound the pasta dough the hardest. Probably a great way to spend a cold or rainy Sunday afternoon, too.

The Pasta:

Like the other recipes in this post, this was adapted from from Marcella Hazan's "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking."

We started by making the pasta, well, at least the first steps, as the dough needs some time to sit. The basic recipe calls for 1 cup of unbleached flour and 2 large eggs. This makes about 3 standard portions. The actual ratio of moisture to flour is more of an art than a science, especially in the tropics, so have a bunch of extra flour standing for when you start making the dough.

Pour the flour onto your work surface, form it into a mound and make a deep hollow in the middle. Break the eggs into the hollow.

Beat the eggs lightly with a fork, like you were making an omelette, for about a minute. Then start mixing in the flour so that the eggs lose their runniness. Pretty soon you’ll be able to start mixing the dough with your hands.

Keep mixing until the dough feels smooth and fairly dry. Add more flour if it feels too moist. If you think it needs a bit more moisture, sprinkle a bit of water onto the dough. The dough is mixed correctly when you can stick your thumb into the middle and it comes out clean.

Move your mound of flour off the work surface, and then clean it of all loose bits of flour or crumbs. Dust it with a bit more of the flour and return the dough to the surface for kneading.

I guess you can use a machine for kneading the dough, but Marcella most definitely recommends against it and I wanted the kids to burn off some energy, so we did it by hand. They certainly enjoyed this part, too.

Basically, you use the heel of your hand to push the mass forward, stretching it out. You then fold it in half turn it 90 degrees and repeat. Marcella reminds us to always keep turning the dough in the same direction, but I have no idea. Do this for 8-10 minutes, until the dough is as smooth as a baby’s bum.

We stopped here for awhile and put the dough into the fridge to rest, while we made the rest of the food. This isn’t a requirement, but I’ve found that it doesn’t hurt the pasta much either. Maybe 30 minutes is what we gave the dough in the fridge.

After we got the meatballs and sauce going, we prepped the pasta maker, something I hadn’t used in years, as it had been in a storage locker. It’s an old Atlas Marcato, with an electric motor attachment, but it still works great and looks cool. Needed a bit of a dust off and some vegetable oil on the rollers, but nothing major – and soon it was ready to make pasta.

We cut the pasta dough into 6 equal hunks and then slowly fed one of the hunks through the rollers, set at their widest setting. This presses the dough into a flattened strip. Fold this twice, into a piece 1/3 the original size, and repeat. Do this 3-4 times until the strip is nice and flat and even.

We did this with each strip, laying them out on a piece of cloth. We then adjusted the roller setting to one notch closer, and repeated the process. This continued until we had 4 long, thin strips of pasta dough – almost too much for our meager counter-tops to handle!

The final stage is to feed the pasta dough through the cutter attachment, producing long strands of soft, beautiful pasta. You let this sit for awhile until it dries out a bit, maybe 10-15 minutes, and then you can cut the strands into the desired length.

This was a bit problematic for us, as the pasta simply doesn’t dry sufficiently in the humidity we have in our kitchen. The strands stuck together some, rather than drying out. I think next time I’ll try putting them (somehow) in a warm oven to help the drying process.

Anyways, after about 15 minutes, we threw a bunch of the pasta into boiling, salted water. We stirred it quite a bit to separate the strands, but we were able to (mostly) avoid clumping. Homemade pasta cooks much faster than the store-bought, dried variety; so it took only 3 or 4 minutes until it was done.

The Meatballs:

Adapted from from Marcella Hazan's "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking."

- A slice of good quality white bread

- 1/3 cup of milk

- 1 pound ground beef

- 1 tablespoon onion chopped very fine

- 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

- 1 tablespoon olive oil

- 3 tablespoons freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese

- Nutmeg

- Freshly ground black pepper

- Fine, dry unflavored bread crumbs

Trim the bread crusts. Put the milk and the bread in a small saucepan, cook over low heat. When the bread has soaked up all the milk, remove from heat and mash it into a pulp with a fork. Let it cool.

In a good-sized bowl, put the ground beef, onion, parsley, egg olive oil, grated parmesan, a pinch of nutmeg (1/8^th of a teaspoon), mashed bread/milk and some ground pepper.

Knead the mixture thoroughly, but gently, with your hands. When all mixed, roll the mixture into 1 inch balls. Marcella recommends rolling the meatballs in the breadcrumbs prior to cooking, but we missed that part and actually added them to the mixture before we rolled them. Didn’t seem to hurt anything.

There are a number of opinions about how to cook them – in the sauce, by themselves entirely, or partially by themselves and then finishing in the sauce. We simply fried them in a bit of vegetable oil in a non-stick pan until browned. Needed a few batches in which to do this, but they came out fine. We drained them on paper towels and left them in a warm oven.

The Modified Bolognese Sauce:

This is the modified “ragu” or meat sauce that we made to go with the meatballs. It too, comes from Marcella Hazan's "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking."

Ordinarily, you would used ground beef or a mixture of pork and beef, with a ratio of 1:2. If you were using ground meat, you would brown it with the onions, etc. after step 1, but before adding the milk.

Makes 2 big cups’ worth, enough for about 6 servings and 1.5 pounds of pasta

1 tablespoon vegetable or olive oil

3 tablespoons butter plus 1 tablespoon for tossing with the pasta later

1/2 cup chopped onion

2/3 cup chopped celery

2/3 cup chopped carrot

1 cup whole milk

1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1 cup dry white wine

1.5 cups canned Italian plum tomatoes, chopped, with their juice

Salt

Pepper

Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese

1. Put oil and butter in a pot with chopped onion. Turn heat on to medium. Cook and stir onion until translucent, then add chopped celery and carrot. Cook for 2 minutes more, stirring the vegetables to coat them well.

2. Add the milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely. This can take a while. Add the nutmeg and stir.

3. Add the wine and let it simmer until evaporated; maybe 5-10 minutes. Add tomatoes and stir thoroughly. When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest simmer with the occasional bubble breaking the surface.

4. Add the meatballs.

5. Cook uncovered for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. If the sauce begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat, add a 1/2 cup of water to keep it from sticking to the pot. At the end, however, no water should remain and the fat must be separate from the sauce. Taste and correct for salt.

The rest you can probably figure out on your own… put the pasta on the plates, cover it with sauce, lotsa meatballs and a healthy dose of freshly grated parmesan. As that guy on TV says: “Boom, boom, boom.”

It was really great.

As mentioned, next time I think I’ll make the sauce and meatballs well in advance, as this was a little too much to handle on a weeknight after work – especially if you want to put your kids to bed at a decent hour. But with a little better time management – and drying the pasta in the warm oven – I’d certainly do this again.

Eat 6 of These and Call Me in the Morning - Dr. Tamara's Awesome Brownies

Living in Singapore as a foreigner, you get used to the fact that many of your friends leave to go home again, wherever that might be. I'm sure this happens in other places as well, but I of course feel it more acutely here. I've made many good friends here - but many have moved away. I'll stay in touch and see them sometimes when I travel, but for the most part, they are gone. (Well, at least until Facebook happened...)

So it's pretty rare that somebody, especially another foreigner, moves *back* to Singapore. Which is what my friend Tamara did. She moved here in the mid-90's, set up a very successful chiropractor practice (she's the best) and then a few years later, moved to China to be with her husband.

A couple of years ago, she moved back and resumed helping bad golfers like me recover from our excesses, being a great friend to many people and delighting everybody she met with her great heart and phenomenal baking skills. Cookies, tarts, cakes - but most of all, Tamara's brownies - were always the hit of any party. And she baked prodigiously. It's amazing she had time for anybody's back...

Often she'd drop by with 2 or 3 boxes of some great baked delights, saying she just did them in her spare time and thought the kids and I might like some.

Might, indeed. We were lucky if they lasted to dinner time.

Anyways, Tamara is once again packing up her chiropractor tools and baking tins, and leaving us - this time for Perth. While she promises to one day return, she leaves behind many good friends, lots of adoring patients, and thousands of children bereft at the hole she is leaving in their dessert menus.

Luckily for all of us, she's also leaving behind her recipe for those great brownies. Modestly, she says they are nothing much, but we all know differently. (In typical Tamara-style, she even makes two different batches each time - one with nuts and one without - and then goes so far as to label them!)


Tamara, we'll miss you (again). But your brownies will always stay with us.... Thanks for everything.

Tamara's Brownies:
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cocoa
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup nuts
Melt butter, stir in cocoa and cool. Add sugar, eggs, vanilla. Mix in dry ingredients. Add nuts if desired.
Bake at 350F for 25-30 minutes.

FROSTING

Cream 1/2 cup butter with 2 cups icing sugar. Beat 2 tsp vanilla, 2 Tbsp milk and 1 cup icing sugar into mixture. Gradually add 1 to 2 Tbsp milk into icing until smooth and of desired spreading consistency. For a chocolate icing add 1/3 cup sifted cocoa to the first addition of icing sugar.

"I sometimes just throw the frosting ingredients in a bowl without measuring. This frosting recipe makes a lot of frosting. But then I often make 2-4 pans of frosting to take over to friends parties if this amount of frosting is made. "

Chicken Liver Pate with Green Peppercorns - Sunday, April 25, 2010

(Photo courtesy of http://trueslant.com/mikehess/)

Like Motley Crue, my weekend was full of girls, girls, girls. Must have been 12, 15 of 'em around. All of them under the age of 7. Quite the tsunami of happy, silly, fun energy. If this is what it's like at 7, I can hardly wait til they're all 12 or 14 - I'm definitely going to need reinforcements.

I almost certainly moved a few steps closer to being allowed into heaven after taking 4 girls under the age of 7 to buy a hamster at the local mall on Saturday. They ooh'ed, they ah'ed, they squealed, they shouted "daddydaddydaddy" a few hundred times. They told me that when this hamster dies, they wanted a horse.

But the trip was a success and we're now the proud owners of a miniscule, smelly rodent that bites and poops a lot but the girls just adore. Depending on who you're talking to - and when - it's either named "SqueakSqueak" "NumNum" or "Stripey". It was sweet though; I got to be hero for a day and was justly rewarded with a nap afterwards. We'll see how attentive the girls are to the new pet. I certainly don't intend on shopping for a horse any time soon.

If that wasn't enough, I decided to have a few friends over for an ad hoc BBQ on Sunday. A "few" turned in 15 or 16, luckily most of them were kids. Teresa brought over some lamb shanks (we think - they were in her freezer for a long time), a large hunk of beef she thinks was a London Broil and a large variety of sausages. I cooked up the corn and potatoes, there was plenty of wine, swimming, running around like banshees and everybody had a good time, it seems. The kids certainly slept well.

While we were cooking, the adults ate a big hunk of really ripe Valencay (a French goat cheese that, after an hour or so in the tropics, resembles Jabba the Hut - though far tastier) with some sliced baguette and Wasa crackers. And a chicken liver pate I made earlier in the day.

We buy chicken from the same guy at the wet market every weekend and sometimes he gives us a bag of chicken livers as a bit of a bonus. We got a pound of them on Saturday and since I knew we'd be having the bbq, I thought I'd try something new with them. The "Silver Palate Cookbook" has been on my shelf for a long time and many of its recipes seem a bit dated - kind of 70's. But every once in awhile, I can still find a gem in there, and this is one.

The pate is quite easy to make and people were literally licking the bowl clean. That may say more about my bbq skills than the pate, but people genuinely seemed to like it and it disappeared pretty quickly. I substituted vermouth for cognac with no ill effects - and I added about a spoonful of rendered chicken fat we had skimmed from the soup the day before. Oddly, I didn't have a 2 cup terrine vessel lying around, but a standard bowl worked fine.

My own pictures to come shortly.

6 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup finely minced yellow onion
2 cloves garlic; peeled chopped
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 cup celery tops
10 black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
6 cups Water
1 pound chicken livers
2 tablespoons Cognac
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
5 teaspoons Water-packed green peppercorns; drained
1/4 cup heavy cream

Melt the butter in skillet. Add the onion, garlic and thyme and cook,covered, over medium heat for about 25 minutes, or until onion is tender and lightly colored.

Meanwhile add celery tops, black peppercorns and bay leaves to 6 cups of water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add chicken livers to water and simmer gently for about 10 minutes, livers should still be slightly pink inside.

Drain livers, discard celery tops, bay leaves and peppercorns, and place livers, butter, onion and garlic in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add Cognac salt. pepper, allspice and 4 teaspoons of the green peppercorns. Process until smooth.

Pour in the cream and process again to blend. Transfer to a bowl and stir in remaining teaspoon of green peppercorns.

Scrape mixture into a 2 cup terrine, cover, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving. Let pate stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before serving.

(Yield: 2 cups)

Carottes Glacees (Glazed Carrots) - Sunday April 11, 2010

(Photo courtesy of www.Recipes4us.co.uk)

Veggies are a problem in my house, as the 2 girls only eat certain ones - and only at certain times ("I only liked those last week") - and, with the exception of corn on the cob, the boy won't knowingly come within 10 feet of a vegetable.

Glazed carrots are a sure winner for the girls, and even the boy has been known to sneak 1 or 2 into his mouth when I'm not looking. This recipe again comes from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and it's quite easy to prepare. Ok, maybe the sugar isn't the best thing for the kids - especially on a Sunday night - but hey, they eat them all up and have fruit for dessert, if it's even needed.

I substitute chicken stock for the beef in the recipe, as that's what we have around the house. I also use brown sugar rather than white. Nobody seemed to suffer much from the substitutions.

(Serves 6 as a side)

- 1.5 lbs carrots, peeled, quartered and cut into 2-inch lengths
- 1.5 cups good brown stock or beef boullion
- 2 Tb granulated (or brown) sugar
- 6 Tb butter
- 2 Tb finely minced parsley
- salt and pepper to taste

Boil the carrots slowly in a covered sauce pan with the stock, sugar, butter and a pinch of pepper for 30 to 40 mins, until the carrots are tender and the liquid is reduced to a syrupy glaze. Correct seasoning.

Reheat just before serving and roll the carrots gently in the pan to coat them with the syrup. Season to taste.

Turn into a warm serving dish and sprinkle with the parsley.

Roasted Baby Leeks With Thyme - Saturday April 17, 2010

(Image courtesy of David Loftus at JamieOliver.com)

For the veg portion of my prepare-in-advance Saturday night dinner, I made these Roasted (Baby) Leeks with Thyme, which I pulled from Jamie Oliver's "Cook with Jamie".

I have mixed feelings about Jamie Oliver. He's so ubiquitous that I don't really want to like him. But his shows are generally charming and great fun to watch and his recipes are straight-forward, almost always delicious and work. I guess I like him... This is his recipe entirely below.

Couldn't find "baby" leeks here in Singapore, so I tried to find the smallest leeks I could at the market. I prepped everything ahead of time and just stuck them in the oven right before dinner was served. We ate all but one of them.

• 20 baby leeks
• olive oil
• red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced

"Preheat your oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6. I like to serve 4 or 5 baby leeks per person, depending on their size. Lightly trim both ends and peel back the first or second layer of leaves and discard.

"Drop the leeks in a pan of boiling salted water for 2 to 3 minutes to soften - this is called blanching. Drain them well (if there's too much water in them they won't roast properly) and toss in a bowl with a good glug of olive oil, a splash of red wine vinegar, the chopped thyme leaves and the garlic.

"Arrange the leeks in one layer in a baking tray or earthenware dish and roast in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes until golden and almost caramelized. Keep your eye on them - I've seen many chefs burn baby leeks when cooking them this way and it drives me mad!"


• from Cook With Jamie