Tortellini has been a part of our family’s Christmas day repast since our kids were … well, since they were kids. We used to make tortellini in brodo, a Northern Italian Christmas tradition. I would make a chicken, beef-bone and vegetable broth on Christmas Eve and then on the day we’d all pitch in to make sheets of fresh pasta and a meaty, cheesy, herby filling out of which we’d fashion hundreds of little belly-button-shaped beauties to float in the rich steaming broth. At the table we’d grate Parmigiano over the top and count our holiday blessings.
One year instead of broth I served the tortellini in a bolognese sauce and it was such a hit we haven’t been back to broth since. I use Marcella Hazan’s classic recipe for the meat sauce and I follow it to the letter because it’s quite perfect. Well, in truth, I add a bit more onion than she calls for. I’m a whore for onions. I tripled the recipe this year because I knew once I tasted it I would want to have more in the fridge for later. This is where the trouble started.
There’s something supremely satisfying about Marcella’s bolognese. Bubbling a cup or two of milk through the meat before adding the tomatoes creams up the sauce and sweetens it. And the five-hour simmer patiently breaks down the components and gives them time to take advantage of each other. It’s a meat sauce to dream about and this year’s version was no exception. The kids and I scarfed down our beefily-sauced tortellini while Jill tucked into her lentils with vegan gusto. Ah, chacon à son goût.
My family is pretty loosy goosy about the holidays. We’ve reduced the mania to a few key factors- a great night together with some Christmas carols, a $50 Secret Santa gift, and a fantastic meal. It’s simple and perfect. My dad is normally responsible for cooking the dinner –which is never a disappointment because he is a fantastic cook. This year, however, my folks had overbooked themselves on Secret Santa day and asked me to take care of the meal. I was thrilled because I had found a few recipes I was dying to take for a test drive and I knew my family would be eager guinea pigs.
arrived in my household I spent hours devouring it, bookmarking so many pages that the book is bloated with post-its. When the opportunity to cook for my family showed up, I knew my Mozza moment had come. Almost everything from this menu is from that cookbook.
A bit of a cold spell finally hit the Pacific Northwest this past week. The rain was so nice, except it rained while we were harvesting our vineyard, not cool mother nature, not cool. We have had such an unusually hot summer so the rain was a nice change for the most part.
I like Worcestershire Sauce. I admit it. One of the things I like about it is its name – how it was that extra thing in it – wor-cest-er-(shur)-ire sauce. I like the bottle, how it comes wrapped almost like a present. It’s almost a guilty pleasure, a secret ingredient that you don’t necessarily want to reveal, like sugar in spaghetti sauce, or sour cream in anything, or ketchup on a steak which I don’t feel guilty about, at all. 
When it comes to flavoring Italian dishes, the usual suspects come to mind -- garlic, shallots, and olive oil. Yet, pancetta, an Italian unsmoked pork belly that is cured with salt and spices such as fennel, nutmeg, and pepper, may just trump them all.