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Thursday, February 14, 2008

The Morning News

posted by on February 14 at 7:45 AM

Admonished: Hypocrite Larry Craig, who is, incredibly, still in the Senate.

Pro-torture: Torture victim John McCain.

Apologetic: Utah state senator who made a racist statement comparing a bill to a “dark, ugly” black baby.

Floundering: Efforts to extend House debate on warrantless wiretap legislation; Bush says “the time for debate is over.”

Nixon’s “Jew-Counter”: Onstage with McCain.

In Contempt?: White House officials who ignored Congressional subpoenas during US Attorney firing investigations.

Under Fire: Roger Clemens, accused of taking steroids and human growth hormone.

Killed by Bush Administration: A well-regarded research program that involved sustainable agriculture and grass-based biofuels.

Not Killing Herself: 90-Day Jane.

Murdoch’s News Corp.: Going after Yahoo?

Recipe of the Day: Marcella Hazan’s Homemade Tagliatelle with Bolognese Meat Sauce

(Recipe via Serious Eats; photo via Creative Commons)

72518915_cec52933db.jpg

Ingredients
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter plus 1 tablespoon for tossing with the pasta
1/2 cup chopped onion
2/3 cup chopped celery
2/3 cup chopped carrot
3/4 pound ground beef chuck, not too lean (or 1/2 pound ground beef chuck plus ¼ pound ground pork, preferably from the neck or Boston butt)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup whole milk
Whole nutmeg for grating
1 cup dry white or red wine
1 1/2 cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 pounds pasta, fresh store-bought or, if you have a pasta machine, homemade, below
Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano at the table
Procedure

1. Put the oil, butter, and chopped onion in a heavy-bottomed pot and turn the heat to medium. Cook and stir until the onion is translucent. Add the celery and carrot and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring to coat the vegetables with fat.

2. Add the meat, a large pinch of salt, and some freshly ground pepper. Break the meat up with a fork, stir well, and cook until the meat has lost its raw color.

3. Add the milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it bubbles away completely. Stir in about 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg.

4. Add the wine and let it simmer away. When the wine has evaporated, stir in the tomatoes. When they begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through to the surface. Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. If the sauce begins to dry out, add 1/2 cup of water whenever necessary to keep it from sticking. At the end, there should be no water left, and the fat must separate from the sauce. Taste for salt.

5. Toss with cooked, drained pasta and the remaining tablespoon of butter. Serve freshly grated cheese at the table.

Fresh Pasta
Ingredients

1 cup unbleached flour
2 large eggs
Procedure

1. Hazan advises you to mix the dough on a flat work surface by building a mountain of flour, making a crater in its peak, dumping the eggs into the crater, and mixing them gradually with the flour. Another option is to mound the flour in a big bowl and scoop out a deep well in its center. Crack the eggs into the well. Beat the eggs lightly with a fork for about 1 minute. Then gradually begin to draw flour into the eggs, mixing it in as you continue to beat. Keep going, little by little, until the eggs are no longer runny. Draw the sides of the mound together with your hands, but push some of the flour to one side, keeping it out of the way until you find you absolutely need it. Work the eggs and flour together, using your fingers and the palms of your hands, until you have a smoothly integrated mixture. If it is still moist, work in more flour. When you think the dough is right (i.e., it does not need any more flour), wash your hands, dry them completely, and plunge your thumb into the dough. If it comes out clean, with no sticky matter on it, no more flour is needed.

2. If your dough still doesn’t seem quite right, it probably will after you knead it. Knead for 8 minutes, pushing the heel of your palm into the dough, folding it in half, giving it a half turn, and repeating. After 8 minutes, the dough should be “as smooth as baby skin.”

3. Now it’s time to roll out the pasta. Cut the dough into 6 equal parts (if you started with 2 eggs; 12 equal parts if you started with 4, and so on) and spread out clean, dry dish towels for the pasta to rest on. Begin by putting each lump of dough through the widest setting on the pasta machine. Fold it into thirds like an envelope and feed the narrow end through the widest setting again. Repeat 2 or 3 times, then lay the strip of dough on a dish towel and move on to the next lump. Once each bit of dough has been through the widest setting, decrease the roller width a notch and put them all through again. Continue to decrease the rollers’ thickness until the dough is quite thin—I go to the arbitrarily-named setting “7,” which is the third-thinnest setting on my machine. The gradual progression from thicker to thinner is, Hazan says, one of the things that makes homemade pasta so good, so don’t try to speed things up by skipping some of the intermediate thicknesses.

4. Let the sheets of pasta dry for at least 10 minutes, turning them over from time to time. The pasta is ready to cut when it no longer sticks to itself but is not yet so dry that it cracks. For Bolognese sauce, you should hand-cut tagliatelle. Fold the properly-dried sheets of pasta loosely along their length so that you end up with a flat roll about 3 inches wide at its sides. With a cleaver or similar knife (I used my pastry scraper), slice the roll into ¼ inch wide ribbons. Cut parallel to the original length of the pasta strip so that when you unroll the noodles they are the full length of the strip. But don’t stress out about this—the pasta will be delicious no matter what shape it is.

5. Cook the pasta in lots of boiling salted water for 1 1/2 - 2 minutes, until it is al dente. Drain and toss immediately with the hot sauce and butter.

RSS icon Comments

1

The food pictures are puke-inducing so early in the morning. Seriously.

Posted by Miss Stereo | February 14, 2008 8:41 AM
2

Why do people find it so hard to use Creative Commons licenses properly? The License for the photo of the pasta is the Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en_CA), which, as the name suggests, requires attribution. Attribution does not mean stating that the photo is licensed under a creative commons license, it means stating that the work was created by a specific person (in this case, you would either credit seriouslygood1 or Kevin Weeks, which I'm guessing is that user's real name). Does linking to that user's flickr page (as you've done) count as attribution? I'm frankly not sure, but as a non-lawyer, I would guess no.

This is definitely one of my pet peeves, since people who license their work under a CC license like this are being really nice - All they want you to do is give an attribution, and then you can use the work for free!

Posted by Nick | February 14, 2008 8:54 AM
3

nick - sloggers have a stone age understanding of attributing sources for images. they basically do a google image search, save the file onto their server, et voila!

my favorites are the ones they upload that have huge watermarks across the image from istock or something.

Posted by some dude | February 14, 2008 9:08 AM
4

McCain is such a douche.

Posted by NaFun | February 14, 2008 9:22 AM
5

Flickr's own rules, of course, say that if you use the photo, you're supposed to make it a link. Not HAVE a link nearby, but clicking on the photo itself is supposed to take you to that photo in the Flickr user's photostream. No one at Slog has ever figured that out, either.

But yeah, that CC license should say "photo by Kevin Weeks, seriouslygood1" [link to seriouslygood1's Flickr page], courtesy Creative Commons. In addition to linking to the actual photo.

Posted by Fnarf | February 14, 2008 9:25 AM
6

do not tell anyone about marcella hazan.

she is my secret.

stop it.

Posted by max solomon | February 14, 2008 9:33 AM
7

Black babys arent ugly!! there adorable, like baby monkeys


At least thats what my great-grandmother always used to say

It may sound horribaly racest now,but it's tame in that era of lyncings when she lived....appraintly they were the parah's of the local professional class...because my great-grandfather treated the poor AND blacks....lived in a shack, was paid in goats in chickens which they either sold for medical supplys or used to feed the family.the great depression that generation could kick our ass, props to grandma and great grandma who raised me

sorry to ramble

guess what I'm saying is just because, an OLD person says something that kind of sounds raciest doesint mean he is
look at chris dodd (or was it joe bidon? there the same person to me) both have wonderful records of civil rights and working towards equality...both are extremly gaiff prone

OF COURSE THIS IS A REPUBLICAN FROM UTAH..so that doesint apply, damn straght he's a raciest

Posted by whaleofashrimp | February 14, 2008 10:05 AM
8

@2 - nobody cares.

Posted by Will in Seattle | February 14, 2008 11:16 AM
9

Hey, Will: fuck off. Okay?

Posted by Fnarf | February 14, 2008 11:33 AM

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