October 21, 2010
Where would Autumn be without chanterelles? I cannot believe that it was only a couple short years ago in grad school that I first came across this awesome mushroom, and fallen in love with it ever since. I tend to fall in love with lots of produce – in the Summer it’s strawberries and apricots and peaches, in the Spring asparagus…oh and we can’t forget pumpkin in the Autumn and Winter months as well. That’s not such a bad thing, is it? To go nuts finding as many tasty ways to use one incredible gift of nature? I don’t think so 
Chanterelles have been in season for a while now. I remember squealing with excitement when I first saw them at the market back in late August. I love using them for normal everyday cooking – toss them into an omelette, into risotto, or on pasta… Oh how I heart pasta. If I could, I probably would eat some type of pasta every day. My absolute favorite pasta is homemade egg pasta, which I taught myself how to make thanks to the wonderful Marcella Hazan and her fabulous cookbooks on Italian cooking. Converting the typical pasta recipe to gluten free is actually not so hard, though over time I did change things to make it a bit easier to incorporate the extra eggs needed. What better way to enjoy one of my favorite mushrooms than to share it on one of my favorite dishes?
October 6, 2010
Bolognese, or at least the Bolognese I grew up with, is my mom’s pasta sauce (and no, this is not something she calls “California Style”). She makes it differently from me though. I love her sauce – she would make about 20 servings at a time, and then freeze it so we could pull it out and use it whenever we wanted. Perfect on top of pasta, with veggies, in lasagna, oh so many many delicious plates can be made with a simple bolognese sauce…I’ve played with her recipe a lot, and found that I tend to like it using fresh tomatoes, and adding in some wine – it’s still rich and tomatoey, I just like the flavor and texture a bit better this way. I hope she doesn’t mind 
After reading a bit about bolognese, I’m pretty sure what I grew up with and this sauce are definitely not a traditional bolognese sauce. According to Wikipedia (obviously a most trusted source in all things culinary), authentic bolognese doesn’t actually have that much tomato in it. Not only that, but a traditional ragù from Bologna is made with milk! Actually, this sauce looks to be a pretty interesting hybrid of ragù alla napoletana and ragù alla Bolognese. Maybe I should call this an American ragù? Seems more fitting than trying to pass it off as an authentic bolognese. And just to go against traditions a bit more, I happen to like mine served alongside some creamy cheese polenta.
