Doesn’t TaZte Like Chicken

Location: My tiny kitchen

Reduction is the magic - this sauce has such an intense flavour that only a small amount is needed to make a dish of pasta very tasty.

In the weekends or during holidays, I always enjoy cooking complicated dishes that takes a lot of patience. For some reasons, I feel ultimately relaxed when I’m carefully dicing ingredient after ingredient, or when I’m patiently waiting for a roast getting cooked in the oven. Once in awhile I like to make a bolognese sauce. Although time consuming to make, the rich flavour in this meat sauce always defeats any ready-to-eat pasta sauce that comes in a jar.

This cream of tomato sauce recipe is very similar to a bolognese sauce recipe. I have tweaked the bolognese sauce recipe by adding a large amount of cream in one of the final steps. By doing so, the sauce becomes thicker. Reduction is another key to this recipe. The sauce is reduced twice, resulting in an intense amount of flavour. I have been a fan of chef Heston Blumenthal, owner of the renowned restaurant Fat Duck, and this recipe is inspired by his way of preparing the bolognese sauce through the method of reduction.

To make 4 servings of the cream of tomato sauce you will need:

- 1/2 of a medium onion, finely diced
- 1 minced shallot
- 2/3 of a carrot, finely diced
- 1 stalk of celery, finely diced
- 5 cloves of minced garlic
- 1 cup of Italian sausage meat, with casing removed
- 2 American bacon strips, finely diced
- 1 cup of chicken stock, preferably unsalted
- 1 cup of heavy cream with at least 33% of milk fat
- 1 can of diced tomatoes, about 400ml

I diced my onion, celery and carrot until they are very fine. The finer they are, the easier to get their flavour into the sauce while they are being cooked.

In a quart pan, put in the bacon bits. Render the fat of the bacon bits by sauteing them over medium heat for a few minutes.

Turn the heat to high and put in the sausage meat. Saute the meat until cooked and golden brown.

Put in onion, celery, carrot, shallot and garlic. Grind in some black pepper. Saute the vegetables until soften. Deglaze the pan with the chicken stock and diced tomatoes.

Bring everything to a boil and then turn the heat down to a shimmer. Cook the sauce until it is reduced to very little amount of liquid. This took me about 1 hour.

Put in the cream and bring it to a boil. As soon as the cream boils, turn the heat down to medium low. Remember to stir occasionally because once the cream is added, the sauce can get burned very easily. Let the sauce reduce until very thick. This takes me about 1/2 an hour.

The sauce is now ready. Although traditionally a bolognese sauce is served with spaghetti, I don’t believe the sauce won’t taste good if other kinds of pasta were served. I’m using fettuccine for this recipe but you can use any pasta that you like - penne, rotini, or even the German spaetzle.

Following the instructions on the pasta bag or box, cook enough pasta for 4 people. When I cook pasta, I usually use a lot of water and I put a lot of salt into the water after I put in the pasta.

When the pasta has been cooked, drain them and mix them with a few teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil.

To assemble:

- Place pasta on a dish.
- Spoon some of the cream of tomato sauce on the pasta.
- Put in some freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano.
- Sprinkle with parsley.

This pasta dish is best eaten hot or warm. Unlike other pasta recipes in which the sauce is always mixed into the pasta in a heated pan, the sauce in this recipe is mixed into the pasta during serving. This is because the cream of tomato sauce is so rich that it clings very well onto the pasta even without the help of heat.