Anne Burrell's Pasta Bolognese Review

Brown food really does taste good ... really good.  This sauce is really flavorful and easy to make.  It is time consuming, so make sure you have a few hours to spend.  I will admit, I changed a few things and rushed the cooking time.  I wanted to make this sauce on a week night after dinner, cool it down, so that it would be ready for the next night's dinner.  I didn't have the full three to four hours to simmer the sauce, I didn't have two cups of tomato paste, and I didn't have three pounds of ground beef.  You're probably asking why in the world I decided to make this sauce when I was missing so many key ingredients, and maybe you're also asking what ingredients I did have.  I wanted to make this sauce because I had a pound of ground beef in the freezer, six really ripe tomatoes, fresh thyme, and jalapeños.  My husband has been growing chile plants and now they all have fruit.  We also have a forest of thyme in our front and back yards.  This sauce seemed like a good way to use up a bunch of ingredients I had lying around.

I pulverized the chiles with the onion, garlic, carrot, and celery.  After they were good and brown, although admittedly I probably could have gone a bit darker, the beef went in.  A pound of beef seemed like plenty of meat, and my husband couldn't believe that the recipe called for two more pounds.  I added the wine next because I didn't have tomato paste.  During all of this, my husband roughly chopped the tomatoes and then ran them through the food mill.  The tomatoes went into the pot and then we added water to the appropriate level.  We also added in a good bunch of thyme and bay leaves at this point and then, as Anne Burrell likes to say, we "BTBRTS".  We added more water twice to the pot during our 2-1/2 hour simmer period.  From my very few data points, I would interpolate that we would need to add water twice more with a longer simmering period.  And that's it.  Pulverize and brown veg; brown meat; deglaze with wine; add tomatoes, herbs, and water; simmer and add water as necessary.  In the future when I make this I would keep the chile and maybe increase the beef just a little.  I really liked the fresh tomatoes, and seriously? Who has two cups of tomato paste lying around? I used to have those little cans of tomato paste, but it felt so wasteful only using a tablespoon or two at a time so I switched to buying the tube of tomato paste.  I'm sure the tomato paste version tastes good too, but if you have happen to have fresh tomatoes I highly recommend using them.  I highly recommend this recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/anne-burrell/pasta-bolognese-recipe/index.html