immersion blender | New York Newlyweds

This is another recipe we found in Jamie Oliver’s book Cook! I will add the directions from full recipe later. This is my recounting of how it went down. The recipe calls for a vegetable ragu to which I said, ‘Here’s some sausage and ground beef’.

I diced and sauteed 3 carrots, 4 celery sticks, 1 large red onion. After about 8 to 10 minutes I diced and added 2 garlic cloves, 4 portabella mushrooms (Read Tom Colicchio’s ‘Think Like a Chef’ for good tips on cooking with mushrooms), and a wine glass of water. Then I added 2 14 oz. cans of tomatoes along with 1/2 pound of ground beed and 1/2 pound of sausage (cooked prior to going into the pot). I brought this to a boil and then reduced it on a low simmer for 45 minutes. I thought the ragu was a little chunky so I used our new immersion blender to blend out the chunks. Then I added salt and pepper. Eventually I also added basil.

I started off with the carrots, celery and onion in a frying pan and quickly realized that wasn’t going to be big enough so I transfered them to a boiling pot before I added everything else. Katie thought the sauce didn’t have enough spice so I added some wine of the leftover J.Lohrr wine from the wedding. I don’t know how much I added… Basically until it tasted good or until there was one glass left in the bottle. I still wanted another glass of wine and didn’t want to have to crank another bottle.

Once the ragu was going I sauteed about a pound of spinach with salt, pepper, and ground nutmeg in olive oil. In retrospect I would use more nutmeg and more spinach next time (the recipe called for 1lb., but I did much less. I also want to try that in spinach as an individual dish to see how it tastes.

The final component is this crazy creamy cheese substance. I took 17 oz. of creme fraiche, added a cup of light cream, and then a large handful of freshly grated parmesan cheese. I used our new kitchen aid mixer to whip this into shape.

Then I layered 1/2 of the cheese mixture on the bottom of my Dutch Oven, the a layer of all of the spinach, the a 1/2 inch of the ragu sauce. Then Katie and I pressed the Rigatoni noodles (standing up) into the sauce until they were about half full.