Regarding Reduction

Ragu alla Bolognese, slowly cooked and reduced, with fresh egg fettuccine pasta

The whole meal

Creamed Corn on the side, made with heavy cream, butter, salt, and pepper

So I did that thing, where you get halfway through the recipe and then you hit the unexpected "cook for 1.5 hours, then add milk and simmer for 45 minutes". SHIT- that totally wasn't in there when I first read the recipe! Either way, this turned into a two-day ordeal with lots of simmering, slow-cooking, and reducing.

Keeping with my theme of the most delicious meals possible, I attempted to make the famous Ragu alla Bolognese. Additionally, I had a cob of corn lying around from an impulse buy the weekend before. Naturally, I did my thing and turned that corn into the most delicious side dish possible. The recipe that I used for my creamed corn involved heavy cream, butter, water, salt, and pepper, all simmered together. Unfortunately, a recipe for 15 cobs doesn't divide down well for 1 cob. So, I was left with a soup of butter and heavy cream, with some corn on the bottom. Instead of taking the corn out and eating it, no, I had to make it more delicious than that. "Reduce!" I said aloud and then I watched a tv show or two while my creamed corn came down to a thick, creamy, buttery, delicious side. It was unbelievably good. It turned out to be perfectly salty with a nice peppery flavor overridden by extreme buttery goodness.

Onto the entree. I made this one by the books, following the recipe exactly. I won't go into the gory details of this one (you can read the recipe in the link at the bottom if you'd like), because it was just a slow-cooked sauce with things added at different times. But here are all the delicious ingredients: 1/2 pound veal, 1/2 pound ground beef, not very lean, two vidalia onions, pancetta, some carrots, some celery, chicken stock, red wine, milk and a touch of tomato paste.

Now, onto some notes on reducing. Reducing is a drag, but it shouldn't be rushed. Seriously- make something else to eat tonight, and know that the meal will be so much better the next night as you let it simmer for extremely long amounts of time. The next thing I learned was an important one - if you need to reduce, reduce as much as possible before adding milk or dairy. Once I added the milk to my sauce and attempted to reduce it more, it started to burn. Luckily I caught it in time, but I was left with a little "smoky" flavor in my sauce. However, with my slightly smoky bolognese sauce, I dined well! I got some freshly made egg fettuccine pasta and cooked it to that perfect al dente point of chewiness. I grated some parmigiano reggiano on top, and it was just as I wanted. Combined, the meal was extremely savory.

After hours and hours of reducing, I was left in a rich delight.



http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Classic-Ragu-Bolognese-365181