I made it with guanciale and parmegan-reggiano.  Started out by boiling the water and preparing the ingredients.  Boiling this much water takes 30 minutes, so I do that before anything else.  Everything else takes almost no time.

The mixing process goes pretty quick, so I didn’t think I would have a chance to take any meaningful photos, so I tried to make a video instead.  I forgot to turn off the TV, so there is Molto Mario playing in the background!

It came out great on the first try!  I was worried that I used too much pasta water, but in the end, the sauce was pretty nice and creamy.  This is a really easy dish and I can’t imagine why so many restaurants screw this up.  It’s really easy and so much better without cream.

I took a trip to Eataly to get all the ingredients. I got great olive oil, tomato paste, meat from the famous “Pat LaFrieda”, product from the green market,etc.  If things go wrong, I will know it’s me and not the ingredients!

First step is to chop and sweat all the produce.  The book recipe only suggest olive oil, but a video I found has a mix of butter and olive oil.  So this is sort of a hybrid recipe.

Sweating away.  Learning from my experiences from last time, I will try to not to keep the heat too low and on TV, Batali always seems to run the temperature pretty high, so I’ll just keep everything a nudge higher than medium.

Sweat done and added the meat.  So far so good.  Everything is looking good and the times are matching up with what the video suggests.  (The vegetables should be done sweating at about the 15-30 minute mark).  Next is to cook down the meat for 45 minutes.

In the video, Batali uses the words “scorchy” and other words making me think that it should be browner than I think it should be.  I’m pushing it more than I think I should, but it still smells good and not burnt.  Although little “extra-brown” bits are showing up…

Browned it as far as I thought I should and added the tomato paste.  Letting this brown as well before the rest of the stuff goes in.  Still smells good and everything has a reddish rust tinge to it, just like he says in the video.

Ok, added the milk, thyme, and wine.  Let it reduce for a little bit, covered and let simmer for an hour.  I put the stove as low as it will go.  Cooking is done and it looks a little “over-browned”..  (I.E. burnt)  Tastes sort of ok.  I’ll continue on with the pasta and see how it works.  I’m getting a little skeptical.

Put a little in a skillet while I boil the pasta.

Cooked the pasta with the sauce for the last minute.  And only used a little bit of the sauce, as Batali always recommends.

Conclusion:
I’ve had a few hours to think about today’s efforts and I decided I definitely burned it at some point.   When I tried to wash the enameled pot, there was a layer of black mass at the bottom that I couldn’t see because the enamel is also black.  I’m starting to think I should’ve went with the white-bottomed Le Creuset instead!  It lets you see what is going on a little better.  It’s probably why they use it for TV all over the place.  Thinking back to the Onion Soup attempt, something similar happened.   I was cooking the onions fine in the stock pot, but the next day I finished the onions in the Staub (enameled pot).  There were also bits of “over-browning” there as well.   After a little bit of searching, people seem to say you need to cook with less heat than with your typical steel/aluminum pans.  On top of my resolve to not undercook anything this time, the new Staub pot doubled down on that and stuff got burnt.   And to “gild that lily” I tried to get away with my 2.5 qt pan to cook the pasta, and that ended up undercooked.  I guess less water = less overall heat and the cooking time is affected.  A good day for learning, but not a good day for eating :(   After thinking through all of this, I realized I already had most of the ingredients to try this again.  I just needed a little more meat.  I went back to Eataly and restocked.  I’ll try and address everything that I think went wrong.  Until tomorrow Signore Bolognese!

Attempt #2:
I didn’t want to start a whole new post with only one photo.  This time the texture was better, but it was tasteless.  I think this time I didn’t let it brown enough.  I need to find the middle ground.  I think I need to leave the heat medium-low, and just let it go longer,  even if its longer than the recipes say. I’ll probably give this another shot next week.  (or tomorrow if I’m inspired) It was also a little too oily, not sure what to do about that.

Attempt #3:
The third attempt went pretty much like the second.  I told myself I would let the meat keep going until it browned.  I gave up afterr it cooked for about 2 hours and still didn’t brown.  I finished the recipe and it was as tasteless as Attempt #2, except the meat was pretty much disintegrated on top of everything!

Attempt #4:
Success!  This time I halved the recipe.  I guessed (correctly) that my pot was too small for this recipe.  It’s a 5 quart pot, which is an appropriate size for my little stove.  I guess that it is much smaller than the typical “family-sized” pot.  I think I could have done the full recipe in this one, but I think I would have had the heat on way higher and constantly stir so nothing burns.   From all the previous attempts, I think I was closest on the first try, then went down the wrong direction in trying to fix it.

This time, after halving the recipe, there seemed to be so much less oil and the meat browned right at 45 minutes when the recipe said it would!  It may look a little similar to previous attempts, but the flavor was there this time.  I also did the pasta correctly this time.  Fresh pasta from eataly, and they recommend 2-4 minutes, but I had to do it for 4.5 minutes.  And that is before cooking it further in the pan with the sauce.  One might think that I’m going past al dente, but this is the same “bite” that Babbo had, so nya!

Anyway, the fat did solidify on the top and was easy to remove.  I strained it once yesterday with a cheesecloth, which should be enough.  (The book says to strain once through a normal metal strainer, then a second time through a cheesecloth)

(P.S.  ”Dawn” dish soap is awesome at degreasing plastic like this.  ”Joy” wasn’t cutting it and “Dawn” came through for me!)

Next step was to cut a whole mess of onions and start cooking it with a whole mess of butter for about 5 hours.  The book was very specific on how to cut the onions, and I think i was fairly consistent.  The book said to get 8lbs of onions and it should yield about 7 quarts of onions.  I ended up with about 7-7.5 quarts after cutting just about 6lbs of onions, so I just stopped there.  He talks alot about the right proportions of everything, so we’ll see how it affects it.  Next time I’ll try the full 8 lbs in a bigger stock pot and see if I can tell the difference.

7 quarts of onions after about 3.5 hours into cooking.

I think I had the heat on the onions a little too low, because after 5 hours, there was still a lot of liquid.  I went another 2 hours then put the onions in the refrigerator (it was midnight by then)

The next day, I reheated the onions then added the stock with a spice sachet and some flour and let simmer for about an hour.

Conclusion:

As Thomas Keller says, “You start learning the second time you make a recipe”  (Or something to that effect) I finished simmering the soup, but I didn’t end up assembling it into the bowls with the crouton and the whole bit.  I made a couple big mistakes, which were enough for me not to want to finish it.  It’s clear in retrospect, but nothing I can do about it now except try again.   As far as the first attempt goes, I’m done and want to move on.

Mistakes:
- Taste, taste, taste.  Keep tasting everything through the process.  The main problem I had was that my stock was weak, way weak, would-give-water-competition-in-a-taste-test weak.   I think it wasn’t simmering hot enough, so it didn’t actually pull out all it could have in the 5 hours.  If I tasted the stock at the end of the 5 hours, I could have done something.  Either reduced it, or cooked it a little more. I also think I can stick with more of the meaty bones and less of the bone-only bones.  (I added some bone-only bones because I thought there was too much meat on the neck bones that I had)

- The onions took way too long to cook and even then, it never got to the level of brown that was pictured in the book.  Again, I think I wasn’t cooking it hot enough.   I think I have some historical fears of burning stuff, so I’m over-compensating in the other direction.

The plan is to cook and document as many items from the cook book that I care to make.  There are a LOT of recipes in there, so I don’t expect that I will cook everything , but I might as well keep going until I get bored.  I have a small NYC apartment with a very small stove as can be seen here.  A small roasting pan and a skillet can not fit on the top at the same time, so there will be some time management involved.

The first will be Onion soup.  It takes a lot of time, but doesn’t seem too difficult. I’ve always had a thing for onion soup and I love the idea of being able to make a good one.  Normally, you’d be able to cook the onions at the same time as making the stock, but deglazing the roasting pan will take some space, so I’ll just do one thing at a time.  No rush.  I’ll probably do the stock today and the onions tomorrow.

First step is to roast the 5 lbs of bones.  There is a great meat market just a couple blocks from here, which had all the meaty neck bones I wanted.   Although they seemed to have a bit too much meat on them, so I also got some normal leg bones with minimal meat to even it out.  I have a petite roasting pan, but all the bones were able to fit perfectly in one layer.

Roasted 45 minutes and flipped once at about the 25 minute mark.  I then moved the bones to the cooling rack to drain and then deglazed the pan with 1 cup of water.

Charred half an onion on a skillet for some color

Loaded the deglazed water, charred onion, roasted bones and 5 quarts of cold water and it just barely fit into my q quart stock pot.  Started simmering for 5 hours.  (this is after simmering for about 1 hour.  The liquid reduced a bit already)  The liquid kept reducing quite a bit, so I had to keep adding water.  (hint:  adding boiling water from a kettle keeps the temperature stable)

Meanwhile, I roasted the rest of the vegetables for about 40 minutes.  1 large leek (3 oz), 1.5 onions and 3 oz of carrot.

I added the spices, herbs and vegetables to the stock for an additional hour of simmering.  Let it rest for 10 minutes then ladled it into a separate container.

I got all the broth I was gonna get, and it was magically 3.5 quarts!  Just like the book predicted.  I put it in an ice bath and stirred it until it got down to room temperature.   I’m going to refrigerate this, then strain it again to get remove any solidified fat.  (The book doesn’t have you do this, but I read it somewhere else as en easy way to get at all the remaining fat)

This is the view in the lobby at my office.  Can’t see it in the photo, but there is a lot of wind and flakes in the air.  I do have my waterproof snow boots on so bring it on!

Still in NJ between the office and the PATH (subway to NYC)  Not too much snow.  It seems they are doing a good job of keeping the walkways clear.  Very happy about the waterproof boots.  I ended up in a few ankle-deep slush puddles that would have gotten me good if I had normal shoes on.

In NYC now and while the snow isn’t deep, you can see the wind and general nastiness.  Have to stop for a quick espresso on the way….

I was labeled a “regular” today at Joe.  They rang me up for an espresso shot before I got to the register. Apparently hardly anyone gets espresso shots, which is probably why I was easy to remember.  My portafilter is on its way to the shop to be modified, so my espresso machine is out of commission until it gets back.  Joe the Art of Coffee will see me quite a few times until then

This was an attempt to show the forum the level of roast of my beans, but maybe everyone’s monitors aren’t color-calibrated.  Get on that everyone!
These beans were a little darker than normal espresso.  They say that darker roasts need a lower temperature.  Since my machine isn’t adjustable like that :( I have to get a lighter roast.  The current bean I’m using is supposed to be more temperature forgiving, but I’m not having any success.  It must be something other than the temperature.

Oh well, the troubleshooting continues.  That’s all a part of the fun for me.

Today I think I got the right idea.  A perfect 2 ounces came out in 25 seconds.  Still bitter and watery, but I was just trying to figure the grind on some older stale coffee beans.  I’m in the general area and when I change beans, I’ll probably have to fine tune it again.  Tomorrow’s goal is to get the temperature/timing right and work with some nice, fresh beans.  I have a couple of pounds that were just roasted on Tuesday!
My main goal with this relatively inexpensive machine is to find out which features really matter to me.  I was reading quite a bit and there were many features that sounded great, but I didn’t want to end up with a $2000 machine and find out I really don’t care about half of them.  This machine is to get some real world experience to find out what I do care about.  For example, one feature that I didn’t even think about before was the boiler capacity.  I thought that I just wanted enough for a shot or 2 of espresso every now and then.  In real life, to get the temperature just right, you are dumping a lot of water out of the boiler.  The problem I was having before I gave up for the night was that by the time I got the temperature just right, the boiler went empty and needed to refill from the room-temperature water reservoir, which screws with the boiler temperature again!  You silly analog world!
Anyway, it’s all pretty complicated, which I LOVE! Not to mention I am just getting started.  Once I figure out the temperature thing, there are still all sorts of other things to learn about.