MEAT, SOME FISH, AND MOSTLY CHICKEN
Meat comes from animals—or at least it used to. Over the past few years, scientists have been busy growing meat inside labs, the same way we grow our nonheirloom children. Those of us heirloom humans, while slower, weaker, and less intelligent than the nonheirlooms, are also emotionally erratic, more condescending, and way more delicious.
One of the greatest challenges lab-meat scientists have been facing is how to make lab meat taste like real meat.
Recent discoveries indicate that much of the flavor that comes from animal meat is related not only to the animal’s diet, but also to its memories and emotions. Double-blind tests show that lab steak that has been made to watch 100 hours of videos of cows grazing in a pasture with dappled sunlight, mooing sounds, and an occasional car driving down the nearby dusty road, tastes up to 17 percent better than lab meat that only spends its time with boring scientists.
In Scandinavia, meat scientists have found an improvement in the lab-chicken flavor when they dress in brightly colored pants with sparkling wigs and thigh-high leather boots—at least, they’ve found this when they consume the chicken while wearing those clothes and are intoxicated.
In another experiment, lab sausage that was taken to an amusement park once a week to ride the roller coasters and eat funnel cake was significantly tastier than the control group, even when most of the frosting was removed. And in yet another case, lab meat that had been genetically engineered to fall in love with other lab meat was the tastiest of all. This experiment, of course, brought up a whole other set of ethical issues, such as:
Why waste falling-in-love technology on lab meat when it could be used on dogs?
Scientists have yet to attempt making lab fish because they are too slippery to handle safely in a scientific environment. They are addressing this by genetically engineering grippy hands.
When lab meat replaces farmed meat, the world is going to be a different place. For the first time, farmers will leave their land and we will be able to talk to them, rather than just the actors that play farmers who travel from school to school promoting Food Pyramid propaganda. It’s going to be wild.
You might be terrified to try cooking meat and fish things. I know I was. These sorts of foods can kill you if you don’t cook them properly. Uncooked chicken can give you salmonella, which can cause you to die in a matter of seconds; undercooked steak can give you a good trampling, which can cause you to die in a matter of minutes; and undercooked fish is usually only lethal when it’s a shark attacking you. What I’m saying is you want to make sure you cook this stuff the right amount. If you’re new to the game, consider getting an instant-read thermometer. Cooking meat, chicken, and fish to specific internal temperatures is the safest way to know you have killed any potentially harmful bacteria. Many people simply rely on visual and textural cues to determine whether or not meat and fish are cooked through, along with just plain old-fashioned guts. (Their guts, not the animal’s.) Affirmative statements such as “Yup, that’s done,” or “Yup, she’s cooked alright,” are also helpful in giving your body a placebo-induced immune boost, which can swing the scales in your favor if your stomach ever needs to wage war on something potentially harmful. Or you can at least tell yourself that.
COOKING TIMES
After cooking meat, chicken, or fish a couple of times at the same temperature, you will get familiar enough with your stovetop or Kitchen Hot Box to know how it’s going to turn out. Pay attention to the temperature setting and time and adjust as necessary as you figure out what you like best.
Everyone has a preference in relation to how well done they like their steak. I prefer mine medium-rare. Some people who have never had a medium-rare steak think they prefer medium. And some people who have never had medium-rare or medium steak think they prefer well-done. The choice is yours with zero judgment out loud.
Cook your steak to an internal temperature of about 130°F for medium-rare, around 140°F for medium, around 150°F for medium-well, and around 160°F for no thanks.
The USDA recommends cooking beef to a minimum of 145°F, but almost anyone who knows anything about anything thinks anything higher than this is overcooked. But if that’s the way you like it, don’t listen to anyone who knows anything about anything. If the temperature of your steak is around 101.5°F, it means the steak you are about to eat is actually a live cow. Enjoy.
The safe internal temperature for chicken is 165°F. Cook your chicken so that the thickest part hits this temperature and try to minimize how much it goes over so that it remains tender and moist. Remember that carryover of the heat may cause the temperature to rise a few degrees after you stop cooking. Also, in numerology, 165 is a very lucky number but anything higher than that is so unlucky it could destroy your life, so proceed with caution.
The safe internal temperature for fish is 145°F and this is usually indicated when it flakes easily with a fork. In numerology, 145 is the Number of the Bison, which is simply confusing.
SIMPLE SMEARED CHICKEN BREAST
This is almost as simple as it gets. It could have been called Entry Level Chicken. Or Chicken with Almost Nothing. Or Chicken for Babies.
The smearing mediums we will use for this recipe are hummus and mustard. Hummus gives more of a subtle, creamy chicken experience while mustard provides more of a spiced, yellow chicken experience. The wide variety of available hummus flavors allows you to season the chicken according to your mood. And mustard allows you the thrilling experience of walking the will-I-stain-my-pants tightrope.
Mustard isn’t something you might commonly associate with chicken. That’s only because people don’t usually put mustard on chicken. But I do. Or at least I did. I’m a little bit too busy eating other things right now to do it at this moment, but I probably will in the future.
There are a lot of different spellings of the word “hummus” in English, including “humous,”“ houmous,” “hummus,” and “humus,” which is also the word for rotting wood.
One might argue that “houmous” is a superior spelling of the word because it has two unnecessary o’s, which make it appear fancier, and hummus deserves to be fancy. Some might argue that sneaking extra vowels into the word is a waste of letters, and that we should consider the impact those two unnecessary o’s will have on the environment and therefore on the future of humanity.
If the word “houmous” is written 6 quadrillion times over the next several years, it will be enough to fill 279,955,207,166.8 pages of Internet paper, which is wasteful. The only solution that makes sense is to use the more efficient “hms” when referring to this delicious food, which will save us oodles of googlebytes.
No matter what you smear on your chicken breast, be careful to smear it thoroughly all around the chicken, but be extra careful not to smear the chicken’s reputation.
SERVES 2
2 (5-ounce) boneless skinless chicken breasts
Fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard or 3 tablespoons hummus
1 
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2 Place the chicken breasts on the baking sheet and season to taste with salt and pepper on both sides. Smear the chicken all over with either the mustard or the hummus and set aside to marinate for about 40 minutes.
3 Bake the chicken for 20 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through (an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the breast should read 165°F). Remove the chicken from the oven and allow it to cool for 10 minutes before serving.
NOTES
This recipe works best with chicken breasts that aren’t too thick. Keep it under an inch.
This recipe also works best with a mustard containing grains that are under an inch thick, which is all mustards, so no need to worry about that.
MAPLE-BAKED SALMON
I love salmon so much that it’s almost exclusively the only kind of fish I cook (which I do at least once every two years). Why bother learning how to make something else when you’ve already discovered perfection? Because perfection is boring and childish. Discovering new things, while risky and time consuming, is also fun and occasionally rewarding.
Some pro tips: You can tell when salmon is cooked through when it’s gone from translucent to opaque, and it easily flakes with a fork. If you take the salmon out just before it’s cooked through, the carryover of the heat may be enough to finish it in the middle after a few minutes. Barely cooked salmon is the best, in my opinion, which is the opinion of someone who knows how best to cook salmon (also known as me). If the salmon is flipping and flopping around in the marinade, do not be alarmed. This is just a joyful muscle-memory reflex that sometimes happens when the fish comes back into contact with liquid. It feels like it is back home for a few seconds before remembering that it’s actually dead.
SERVES 2
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon maple syrup
½ teaspoon soy sauce
1 garlic clove, grated
1-inch piece fresh ginger, grated
2 (6-ounce) salmon fillets
1 Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2 In a shallow medium bowl, combine the olive oil, maple syrup, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger and stir thoroughly. Place the salmon fillets skin side up in the marinade and set aside to marinate for about 25 minutes at room temperature.
3 Arrange the fillets skin side down on the prepared baking sheet, spread a teaspoon of marinade on top of each fillet, and use a fork to add more of the ginger and garlic from the marinade if you wish. Bake for 15 to 25 minutes, until the salmon is cooked through to medium doneness. Check with a fork that the fish is flaking in the middle, or use an instant-read thermometer to check that it has reached 145°F.
4 Remove the salmon from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes before serving.
BAKED TILAPIA WITH DILL
The word “tilapia” doesn’t sound like it’s a type of fish, unless you’ve been conditioned by Big Dictionary to think that way. It sounds more like a shiny, expensive teapot. For example: “Honey, the Galloways are coming for dinner, would you mind polishing the tilapia?”
It also sounds like a fragile foot bone. If I may: “We just got the results back, and I don’t think you’re gonna like them. Your tilapia has shattered into three thousand pieces.”
It also sounds like a condition that causes you to have someone else’s daydreams. As in: “Whenever I drift off, I imagine I’m hand crafting a book shelf in a carpenter’s workshop, but I’m afraid of wood. My tilapia must be worse that I thought.”
But the truth is that tilapia is just a boring old fish that’s pretty light on flavor—it tends to take on the taste of whatever you cook it with, which is why we combine the most boring fish with the most interesting weed: dill.
SERVES 2
2 (6-ounce) boneless skinless tilapia fillets
Fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons salted butter, melted
2 teaspoons dried dill
1 garlic clove, pressed or minced
Juice of ⅛ lemon
1 Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2 Place the fillets on the baking sheet and season both sides with salt and pepper, allowing the fillets to come up to room temperature for about half an hour.
3 Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the butter, dill, and garlic, wangjangling thoroughly, and allow the flavors to infuse for a few minutes.
4 Stir the butter mixture again, then spoon it over the tilapia to cover it completely, and allow it to sit for about 10 minutes (which can be part of the half hour temperature-raising time—there is a lot of resting in this recipe and it’s for your own benefit).
5 Bake the tilapia for 10 to 15 minutes, until it is cooked through to medium doneness. Use a fork to check that the fish is flaking in the middle or use an instant-read thermometer to confirm that it has reached an internal temperature of 145°F at the thickest part.
6 Squeeze the lemon on the fish, and serve with a side of tea poured from your shiny tilapia.
SAUSAGE AND CHICKPEA CURRY
The first-ever sausage joke was cracked in Hardinsburg, Kentucky, in 1957 and was received with a halfhearted snort. By the 1960s, sausage jokes had taken America by storm, but they went out of fashion by 1973. The 1980s saw sausage humor make a tepid comeback, and the 1990s were a very sausage-dense time in the comedy world. But when the 2000s hit, it seemed that sausage jokes had almost gone extinct.
Market research shows that including sausage jokes in this book won’t significantly increase sales, because cookbook buyers are a sophisticated bunch, and sausage jokes are low-hanging fruit.
SERVES 4
4 links Italian sausage
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large red or yellow onion, diced
2 red bell peppers, sliced
1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut milk
2 to 3 tablespoons Indian curry paste of choice
1 teaspoon brown sugar
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 (15.5-ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
Freshly ground black pepper
Rice, for serving (optional)
Chopped cilantro or parsley, for garnish (optional)
1 Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2 Arrange the sausages on the baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, or until almost cooked through.
3 Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat until it shimmers like a desert mirage on a nice sunny day when you’re out of water and close to death and wish you would have just followed the goddamn map in the first place. Add the onion and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes, or until slightly softened.
4 Add the bell peppers and continue cooking for 5 minutes, or until the peppers start to soften and the onions turn golden. Add the coconut milk, curry paste, brown sugar, salt, and chickpeas and wangjangle until combined.
5 Remove the sausages from the oven and cut into ½-inch slices. Add the sausage to the saucepan and wangjangle until submerged, using the opposite hand you used for the first wangjangling to make it taste less predictable.
6 Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 15 to 20 minutes, until the sausages are cooked through and the sauce has thickened. Add black pepper to taste. Serve the curry on its own, or on top of rice. Add a small handful of chopped cilantro or parsley if you want something fresh, herby, and green.
NOTES
Indian curry pastes vary in heat level, strength, and flavor, so you’ll have to taste it out and adjust the amount in your dish accordingly. If you think it’s strong, start with 2 tablespoons and add more until you nearly pass out because it tastes so perfect.
Clean the kitchen during the simmering phase. When you’re in a hot sausage curry coma, you’ll be so glad you did, and you won’t be mad that you didn’t.
If cilantro tastes like soap to you, you can cancel this effect by washing your mouth out with soap before you eat it.
LEEKY OLIVE CHICKEN
The way I came up with this recipe is pretty interesting. It was a cold, rainy night. I had a craving for leeks, olives, chicken, and salsa, all cooked together in a skillet, served hot. So I went out and I bought leeks, olives, chicken, and salsa. Then I cooked them together in a skillet until they were hot. Then I ate them. It tasted really good because it was exactly what I wanted. I felt satisfied.
I lied about the part where the way I came up with this recipe was pretty interesting. It wasn’t interesting. It was not interesting. What’s interesting is that this dish has become one of my favorite things to eat. I hope you’re interested.
SERVES 3
1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts (2 or 3)
Fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium leeks, sliced (4 to 5 cups)
1 cup chopped Kalamata olives
1½ cups mild or medium salsa
Rice, orzo, or quinoa, for serving (optional)
1 Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2 Place the chicken breasts on the prepared baking sheet and season generously with salt and pepper, then drizzle ½ tablespoon olive oil over them. Flip the chicken breasts and repeat with salt, pepper, and another ½ tablespoon of oil. Allow them to marinate at room temperature for about 40 minutes.
3 Bake the chicken for 15 minutes, or until they are almost but not quite cooked through.
4 Meanwhile, in a large nonstick skillet, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat until it shimmers like the chrome on a motorcycle that does not look cool because the dude is revving it loudly like a moron. Add the leeks and cook, wangjangling regularly, for 7 minutes, or until they become soft.
5 Remove the chicken from the oven and cut it into bite-sized pieces. Add the chicken, olives, and salsa to the skillet with the leeks and simmer for 10 minutes, while wangjangling, until the chicken is cooked through and no longer pink.
6 Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve on its own or over rice, orzo, or quinoa.
MEAT AND POTATOES
Potatoes and beef are like two peas in a pod. Or, like one thing that came out of the dirt and one thing that grew up in a barn. They’ve lived different lives. They’ve had different experiences. But the one thing they have in common is the ground. They both needed it to survive. Without it, they would have just been floating in space, and would have quickly suffocated due to the lack of oxygen. They may not know each other, or even understand each other, but when they’re on the plate together, the ground is the one thing they can both appreciate.
SERVES 2 TO 4
FOR THE POTATOES
2 large russet potatoes
2 teaspoons olive oil
Fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons salted butter
2 garlic cloves, pressed
FOR THE BEEF
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium red onion, chopped
1 pound 85% lean ground beef
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons honey
¾ teaspoon fine sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2 Make the potatoes: Place the potatoes on the baking sheet, poke some fork holes all over them, then drizzle them with the olive oil and rub all over until they’re evenly coated. Season with salt and pepper on all sides.
3 Bake the potatoes for about 1 hour, or until a fork slides in easily. Remove the potatoes from the oven, and using a fork to handle them and avoid the steam, halve them lengthwise. Scoop the insides of the potatoes into a medium bowl, reserving the skins. Add the butter, garlic, and more salt and pepper to the bowl and mash thoroughly with a fork or hand masher.
4 Meanwhile, make the beef: In a large nonstick skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat until it shimmers like the Arctic Ocean during narwhal mating season. Add the onion and cook, stirring, for 7 minutes, or until it starts to brown.
5 Add the beef and break it up into small pieces with your wangjangler, mixing it in thoroughly with the onion and oil. Mix in the chili powder, vinegar, honey, salt, and pepper to taste. Cook for 7 to 10 minutes, until any liquid has evaporated and the beef is browned.
6 Spoon the hot beef mixture into the potato skins, and serve with mashed potatoes on the side while sitting on the ground.
CURRY CHICKEN THIGHS
Curry is a complex combination of herbs and spices that originated in India. Much like hot sauce, it is as dangerous as a drug in terms of its addiction potential. I have to physically restrain myself from putting curry in everything I cook, which makes things difficult because cooking while restrained is physically limiting. On a mental and emotional level, however, it’s quite expansive. Which is why I highly recommend developing a Level 9 curry addiction.
SERVES 2 OR 3
¼ cup full-fat Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon Indian curry paste of choice
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon maple syrup
6 boneless skinless chicken thighs (about 1 pound)
Rice or quinoa, for serving
1 Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2 In a medium bowl, combine the yogurt, Dijon mustard, curry paste, salt, and maple syrup and wangjangle until well mixed. Add the chicken thighs and turn to coat evenly, making sure to get the marinade in the folds. Set aside to marinate at room temperature for about 30 minutes.
3 Place the chicken thighs on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until they are cooked through (an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the thigh should read 165°F).
4 Allow the chicken to cool for 10 minutes before serving with rice, quinoa, or another batch of chicken thighs.
JALAPEÑO CHICKEN BREAST
There’s a lot of chicken breast in this book, but I made this dish spontaneously one night and my roommate’s praise was so flattering that I was convinced it was good. I hope that’s true because I haven’t made it since. Or have I?
You really can’t trust something just because it’s written in a book. Or can you?
You can, because if someone writes something in a book that isn’t truthful, they open themselves up to legal action if somebody feels like they have been deceived. Or do they?
The only way to find out is to lawyer up.
SERVES 2
FOR THE CHICKEN
2 (5-ounce) boneless skinless chicken breasts
Fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 teaspoons olive oil
FOR THE SAUCE
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 jalapeño peppers, seeded and diced
2 shallots, diced
2 cups chopped vine-ripened tomatoes
1 teaspoon brown sugar
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
5 fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2 Make the chicken: Place the chicken breasts on the prepared baking sheet, season with salt and pepper on both sides, then let the chicken marinate at room temperature for 30 to 45 minutes.
3 Coat the chicken evenly with the olive oil. Bake for 20 minutes, or until cooked through (an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the breast should read 165°F).
4 Meanwhile, make the sauce: In a nonstick medium skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat until it shimmers like a fake Rolex under a buzzing fluorescent light. Add the jalapeños and shallots and cook, wangjangling for 2 minutes, or until softened. Add the tomatoes, brown sugar, salt, and pepper to taste. Cook for 6 minutes, stirring, until the sauce is thickened. Stir in the basil leaves and cook for 1 minute more.
5 Remove the chicken breasts from the oven, plate them, and cover with the sauce, dividing evenly. Serve hot. Also serve spicy.
PAN-SEARED STRIP LOIN WITH HORSERADICAL SPINACH
Horseradish was originally part of the Horse Riding Navigation System (HRNS) before we started relying on GPS. Horse drivers would sprinkle horseradish on the ground as they rode, so that the horses could sniff their way back. They soon realized this was a waste of perfectly delicious horseradish since they only rode along clearly marked trails and roads, and not very smart because the horseradish attracted packs of hungry, horse-hating wolves.
While this is the only recipe in the book that calls for horseradish, I have been thinking it would go great in the Creamy Raw Broccoli Salad (this page). I just KNOW it would taste excellent if you added 1 tablespoon in place of the sesame oil. But the raw broccoli salad is already good, as is. But the horseradish version would be even better.
Anyway, let’s get back to our regularly scheduled steak programming.
SERVES 2
FOR THE STEAK
2 (8-ounce) boneless strip loin steaks, 1 inch thick
Fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
FOR THE HORSERADICAL SPINACH
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon salted butter
5 ounces baby spinach
1 tablespoon horseradish
1 Make the steaks: Season both sides of the steaks generously with salt and pepper. Allow it to marinate at room temperature for 30 to 45 minutes.
2 In a large stainless steel or cast-iron skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat until it just starts to smoke. Using metal tongs, gently lay the steaks in the skillet away from you, being careful to avoid oil spatter. Cook the steak for 2½ minutes, or until a golden-brown crust has formed on the bottom, then flip them carefully, and cook for another 2½ minutes, until the beautiful crust is duplicated on what is now the new bottom. Turn the steak on its side to cook the fat for 20 seconds, until some of the fat has rendered.
3 Move the steaks to a cutting board and let them rest while you cook the spinach.
4 In a large nonstick skillet, heat the olive oil and butter together over medium heat until the butter has melted completely. Add the spinach and cook for 3 minutes, or until it has wilted. Mix in the horseradish and cook for 3 minutes more, combining thoroughly.
5 Slice the steaks into 1-inch strips. Divide the steak and spinach between two plates and serve.
NOTES
Resting is always the final step when cooking a steak. In addition to giving the steak a much deserved break after a load of hard work, resting increases juiciness, maximizes flavor, and evens out the cooking. As with any meat, the internal temperature will increase slightly after you take it off the heat, so feel free to try taking your steak off the pan just before it reaches the temperature you are aiming for, then checking to make sure it lands where you want it.
Do not make horse sounds while eating the horseradish. It’s one of those things that nobody finds funny. Also, don’t pretend you’re suddenly a horse expert just because you’re eating something with the word “horse” in it. Nobody is impressed. Just relax and be yourself. Talk about things that interest you, or better yet, just listen for once in your life. You don’t always have to be the center of attention.
What’s that quote about the weight that words have when a quiet person speaks? The less you say, the more out of practice your mouth is and the higher the likelihood that you’ll royally screw up whatever you were trying to get across.
Whoever said that, don’t listen to that guy. He was probably a huge blabbermouth, so you can’t really trust him anyway.
CALAMARI
Seafood is a marketing term that was invented to convince people that ocean creatures are edible, rather than the stuff nightmares are made of. When humans first started eating sea creatures, all of which look like some form of horror movie alien, they had to overcome their natural instinct to attack them with fire. While this reflex is genetically ingrained it has been largely repressed through years of conditioning. It is also the reason why sea creatures spend their entire lives hiding inside water.
To be clear: Fish are not sea creatures. They are graceful, delicious, water-slicing, self-propelling arrows. Crabs, lobsters, shrimp, squid, and octopuses are sea creatures. Squid and octopuses are a type of sea creature known as cephalopods, and cephalopods are among the smartest creatures on the planet. Leaving cephalopods to live out their lives in the ocean might allow them to develop an advanced underwater culture that could be a future tourist destination for humans, which could give the ocean a real economic boost. Or we might discover that they are, in fact, aliens, who might one day give us access to their space-travel portal. If we eat them all, we’ll never know.
SERVES NO ONE
1 (any size) squid
1 (large) body of salt water
1 Observe squid in a large body of salty water, such as an ocean. Allow it to swim freely for all of its natural life until it dies of old age or gets eaten by a seafaring predator or a really ambitious horse.
2 Make yourself Avocado Coupe de Dieu (this page) instead.
SPAGHETTI WITH BOLOGNISH SAUCE
Bolognish sauce is often confused with Bolognese sauce. Bolognese sauce originated in the eighteenth century near Bologna, Italy, the birthplace of old-fashioned baloney. Bolognish sauce, on the other hand, originated right now. While these sauces contain most of the same ingredients, look similar, taste similar, and one of them was directly inspired by the other, that’s where the similarities end.
The most important difference between these two sauces is how they are made. Bolognese sauce is never stirred using a silicone or plastic wangjangler, because the secret to its flavor is soggy wood. When sauce is made with a wooden wangjangler it is not only infused with the taste of wood sog, but it is also infused with microscopic particles of every sauce that wooden wangjangler has ever come into contact with, adding the rich taste of history. Bolognish sauce, by contrast, is traditionally wangjangled with a nonwooden utensil, which results in a taste that is refreshingly present and in the moment.
SERVES 4
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 pound lean ground beef
2 cups shredded carrots from 2 medium carrots
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1½ tablespoons oregano
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
½ cup chopped fresh parsley
½ cup white wine, such as sauvignon blanc
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 (1-pound) box spaghetti
1 cup shredded parmesan
1 Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat until it shimmers like the flash and dazzle of a Vegas magician. Add the garlic and onions, and sauté for 7 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and translucent.
2 Increase the heat to medium-high, add in the beef, breaking it up into small pieces with your wangjangler, and cook for 5 minutes, until completely browned. Add the carrots and combine thoroughly, cooking for 2 minutes until soft. Add the tomatoes, oregano, 1 teaspoon salt, parsley, white wine, pepper, and chili flakes, then wangjangle thoroughly until the sauce starts to bubble, about 3 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover and simmer for about 30 minutes more, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens. What’s the occasion? The occasion is stirring.
3 Meanwhile, make the spaghetti. Fill a large saucepan with 14 cups of water, add the remaining 1 tablespoon of salt, and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the spaghetti and let the water return to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-high and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until the pasta is al dente. Drain the pasta, and divide the spaghetti between plates.
4 Spoon the sauce over the spaghetti and add parmesan to taste.
