A Spoonful of Sugar

Leftovers. Such an unappetising word. Surely the collective mind of millions of food-lovers can come up with something better? At any rate, I always try to cook a little more food than we really need as I love to stash away the excess in the freezer for those nights when I just can't be bothered to cook from scratch.

There's a certain quiet joy in opening the freezer and looking at baskets of neatly labelled--yet stacked in a most higgledy-piggledy fashion--bags and tubs of food. At this point, I realise I may be sounding almost as mad as Nigella, who seems to have become peculiarly obsessed with her "frigid larder", but really I'm not. Honest.

Anyway, enough waffle. On to the food!

This richly flavoured pasta dish is indeed the product of leftovers. (I swear that word makes me shudder.) After making Stracotto di Manzo (beef braised in red wine) and the Roasted Butternut Squash Tortelli last weekend, I had plenty of delicious leftover beef and a half-recipe of pasta dough sitting in the fridge.

I toyed briefly with the idea of making some ravioli stuffed with some of the beef--Elizabeth David gives a most delicious sounding recipe for a similar dish in Italian Food--but in the end decided that I wanted something a bit less labour-intensive.

Into a saucepan went two portions of the pot-roast--while the remainder found a happy home in the freezer--along with a couple of sprigs of sage, a tin of chopped tomatoes and some seasoning. I simply let the sauce simmer uncovered for a couple of hours while Lucas and I played with Thomas the Tank Engine. Cue gratuitous cute photo! (Clicky!)

Later on, while Lucas was napping and I still had the theme song for Thomas and Friends rattling round in my head, I dealt with the pasta. Upon the advice of Marcella Hazan, I opted to cut the pasta by hand into pappardelle as this was the Proper Shape to use for a chunky meat sauce. I figured that Marcella knows far more about pasta than I do, so was perfectly happy to follow her advice. I must say that pasta making is really quite soothing once the dough has been made. I'd do it much more often if it wasn't for the thought that I'd have to spend 20 minutes kneading the world's stiffest dough...

Once Lucas was in bed for the night and I had finally expunged the last few bars of that oh-so-catchy and oh-so-irritating theme from my head, I cooked the semi-dried pappardelle and tossed them with the still-warm pasta sauce along with even more freshly chopped sage for an extra pungent note. (I've discovered that I love the flavour of long-cooked sage combined with the raw. Yummy!)

I'd say that this improvised supper turned out very well indeed. The meat was meltingly tender--as it jolly well should be, considering how long it was cooked overall!--and the rich tomato, wine and vegetable sauce just coated the pasta with a thin layer of sauce. Next time I think I'd add a touch of extra olive oil, just to emulsify the sauce a little more for extra clinginess.