That's Amore

Ah. Valentine's Day. Love and chocolate. Candlelight and romance. Turkey sandwiches and beer.

You hear single people bitching about how depressing and awful Valentine's day is, but it ain't so hot for the coupled-up, either. Such high expectations, such hope for magic and romance. Such crap. After one particularly spendy and utterly disappointing Valentine's dinner at a restaurant we loved in NYC, I vowed never to go out on this occasion again. We choose to stay home--to avoid the glut of amateurs who flock to "fancy" restaurants for overpriced prixe fixe menus, cranky waiters and, let's be honest, second-rate food. So many restaurants must realize that people who pack the house on Valentine's are so desperate for a romantical evening, they'll overlook mediocre food. Um, not me.

I decided to cook Chris' favorite, instead. Capellini with homemade Bolognese. How quaint. And yet, it turns out, cooking at home has the same libido-snuffing potential as slogging through a foot of snow and ice to eat a faux romantic meal.

Here's what happened. I had such great success with the sausage-making endeavour, I'm now obsessed with grinding meat. I ground up a few strip steaks that were slightly freezer burned (due to getting buried in the depths of a cube freezer) and some boneless pork country ribs and veal.

Making Bolognese is not difficult, but it IS time-consuming, as I found out. The problem started when I decided, 'WTF, I've got at least a pound of each type of meat, why not quadruple the recipe?', which called for 1/4 pound of ground beef, pork and veal. So I did.

Ground beef, pork and veal with mirepoix

If only I had read the recipe start to finish, and realized that the cooking time for a single recipe was three hours, a doubled recipe would be four hours...you do the math. Say, five or six hours of slow and low simmering time?

The recipe requires the liquids (first milk, then white wine) to evaporate. When you jump from one cup of each liquid...to FOUR, well, it takes a long time.

Mid-milk-evaporation, lotsa fat

I started prepping at 3, so the milk simmer started around 4, the wine simmer started at around 5, the addition of the tomatoes and reserved liquid happened around 6...and then the real cooking started. Suffice it to say, we didn't have bolognese, sauteed rapini and a lovely bottle of red for dinner. We had turkey cold cut sandwiches and beer. Oh, and three (yes, three) tasty Vosges truffles from the box Chris brought me.

But it's hard to get mad at a misfired dinner when I still have a refrigerator and freezer full of delicious bolognese.