This thread is getting me inspired to open my copy of Essentials and get to tackling some of the recipes suggested, especially Jenn Kalb’s list. I too wasn’t a huge fan of the lemon chicken — I found the Zuni recipe better.
The link to the project website is just amazing.
I’ve made the bolognese before, as well. I also enjoy the lasagne bolognese verdi by the late Biba Caggiano (wafer thin sheets of light spinach pasta, bechamel, bolognese, parm — in 10 to 12 layers). But that recipe is so labor intensive — but I was fortunate to have the recipe made by her original staff at a restaurant in February.
@TheLibrarian28 – the site has kindly created a “cooking-from” tag by request, and it doesn’t seem a stretch for Marcella Hazan’s tomes to be the theme of our first Cooking From thread based on how many people got excited here – what do you think?
I’ve made that spinach pasta, lotta work and I couldn’t taste any difference from regular pasta. I don’t like frozen spinach so it was fresh, cooked briefly, squeezed well.
The Anti-Chef cookbook series, on Youtube, has a subcategory for Hazan recipes. I enjoy his episodes but skipped the Hazan ones because I have made the butter/onion/canned San Marzano sauce as per the recipe before, and found it as thoroughly repellent as I suspected I would.
It is a lot work — the original recipe is with fresh or frozen. At most there is a delicate vegetable flavor but the real point is the super thin sheets of pasta. The restaurant is doing 12 sheets at the moment. Velvety, smooth and delicious.
On the other thread — I agree that sauce is divisive. But the other recipes are quite good — though I need to try more secondi from the cookbook as well.
I think that both the number of Layers and the Spinach Pasta are very Traditional in Bologna.
It looks like Mattone’s Ragù is heavier on the Tomato than I would expect from a Ragù Bolognese
I think it may be the artifact of the photo, as I recall not as brilliant a color, or perhaps they’ve tweaked the original recipe. Caggiano was from Emilia-Romagna. Her recipe differs from Hazan’s with less milk and less tomato (in the form of paste)
Hazan’s Bolognese is perfection. So this is not an improvement but a variation. I grind and toast some fennel seed and it with the nutmeg. Ok, time to make it, maybe this weekend. I still have some semolina. I mix equal parts semolina and AP in my pasta dough.
I made Marcella’s two-lemon chicken tonight - fantastic! Thanks to @Aubergine for posting the reference on the WMP thread.
I pretty much followed the recipe, the only changes being I dry-brined the bird in S&P for 24 hours in advance of cooking, and I took @CaitlinM’s advice to be bold and squeeze the lemons for a pan sauce. It was all a big hit - juicy, flavorful and so easy!
I’m happy I made it, and will certainly make it again.
