Day: April 2, 2020

Italian meat sauce and lasagne…

I’m sheltered in place, I’ve got enough ammunition reloaded to arm an infantry platoon, I’ve been reading a lot, and I’ve been sending and receiving lots of email.  Some of that email has been from good buddy Sergeant Zuo over in Lanzhou, and one of the things Zuo mentioned he’s been doing is developing his culinary skills.  I’ve been doing the same, and I thought I might share one of my favorite recipes with you.

Whoa, you might say…all this manly man stuff about motorcycles, international travel, guns, reloading, and…well, you know.  Cooking?

You bet.  For me, it started back in the ’70s, when I was an engineer at General Dynamics in Texas on the F-16.  I couldn’t get a date to save my life, I was single, and I was lonely.  And there were all those beautiful young Texas ladies.

One of my good friends was constantly dating a variety of beautiful women.  So one day I asked him:  What’s the secret?

Good buddy John was only too happy to put me on the right path.  “Don’t ask them out for dinner,” he said.  “Invite them over to your place for dinner, and you cook a meal.  No one can resist that…”

Hmmm….

Well, it worked.  Every time.   And today I’m married, two kids, two grandkids with a third on the way, and yep, I love to cook.

So here’s one of my favorite recipes:  Italian meat sauce and lasagna.   It’s not the original dinner good buddy John cued me to (that was bacon-wrapped filet mignon, and that’s a story for another time).  But this one is even better, I think.  You can use the meat sauce with anything Italian (ravioli, spaghetti, stuffed shells, and more).  Today’s focus is on lasagne and it works well.

Italian Meat Sauce Ingredients

What you’ll need is:

1 16-once can of diced tomatoes (my preference is Contadina, but these days, I’ll take whatever is on the shelves)
1 8-0unce can of tomato paste
2 stalks of celery (sliced)
1/2 onion (chopped)
3 cloves garlic (crushed)
1 lb ground beef (browned and chopped)
1 Italian sausage
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon oregano
2 bay leaves
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon red chili pepper flakes (depending on how much zing you want in your sauce)

Getting started. I don’t usually eat the sausage, but having it in the crockpot adds tremendous flavor to the sauce.
You can leave this out if you don’t want a tiny kick to the sauce, but I think it adds something to the mix. I generally use a little more than a quarter of teaspoon.
We usually get the leanest ground beef we can find.
Brown the meat in a frying pan.  As the ground beef simmers, I’ll chop it up with a plastic spatula.  PRO TIP:  I think the sauce is better if you chop the meat into the tiniest pieces you can get while it is browning.
I chop the onion into pieces like you see here.
Sliced celery in Italian meat sauce?   Yep. Try it.

So when everything is prepped, add it all to the crockpot, stir it a bit, and then start the crockpot. I start my Italian meat sauce in the morning and I’ll let it cook for about 5 hours on the crockpot’s high setting.

After everything is in the crockpot, stir it before turning the crockpot on.

While it’s cooking, the house will fill with this delicious Italian meat sauce aroma.  That’s part of the fun.  When the sauce is ready, it’s delicious.

The finished Italian meat sauce. It’s exquisite.  It’s far better than anything that comes out of a can or a bottle.

PRO TIP:  Slice up a half a green pepper, and add it to the crockpot before you start cooking.   It adds another flavor dimension.

Lasagne

Like I said above, you can use the Italian meat sauce with any recipe calling for it.  One of my favorites is lasagna.  All you’ll need in addition to the ingredients listed above is a box of lasagna noodles.

Lasagne Ingredients

1 box lasagna pasta
16 ounce container of ricotta cheese
Shredded parmesan cheese
1 container of sliced mozzarella cheese
Italian meat sauce (as prepared above; you’ll need the entire pot)

Follow the directions on the pasta box and boil the noodles.  I usually drop a little bit of olive oil in the boiling water to keep the noodles from sticking to each other.  The box will probably tell you to boil the noodles for 8 minutes.  Don’t go over that or the noodles will get too soft.

After the noodles boil, drain in a colander and we’re ready to start.
Place one layer of noodles in a baking pan.
Place a layer of meat sauce on top of the noodles; then, put ricotta cheese on top of the meat sauce.
Place slices of mozzarella cheese on top of the ricotta cheese as shown here.  Add another layer of noodles and repeat the layering with meat sauce, ricotta cheese, and mozzarella cheese.  Repeat this layering until the bowl is nearly full.  Sprinkle a little bit of Parmesan cheese on top.
Cover the pan with aluminum foil and preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Bake at 375 degrees, covered, for 40 minutes. I like to remove the aluminum foil and put the oven on broil for a couple of minutes to brown the cheese on top just a bit.

And there you have it.  It’s good, it’s easy, and you’ll have plenty of leftovers.

Aztec Ruins, New Mexico and Motorcycle Classics magazine

This was exciting…Susie and I were tooling through New Mexico on  our way to Mesa Verde in Colorado when we spotted a sign for Aztec Ruins National Monument.   We’d never been there.  In fact, we had never even heard of the place.  But it’s there, it’s real, and it’s a grand destination.  The result?   Well, hey, check this out!