I have mentioned that I love the cookbook Frankies Sputino. They have broken down their recopies so that a home chef and literally cook them to the same level of excellence they do in their restaurant. Once we discovered lamb shoulder was available, their Lamb Ragu recipe jumped off the page. What makes this recipe cool is that it is a 2-3 day recipe to make and it creates a fantastic ragu that serves 8. This means that we will have at least 3 additional meals from it. (They tell you where in the recipe to store it before finishing the dish. On day 1, you start out before you even get a chance to roast the lamb, by making a veal stock. To do this you roast veal bones in the oven, then you cover them with water and aromatics before simmering the bones for 4 hours. On day 2, you next, salt and pepper the lamb before roasting it at high temperature for about 45 minutes. While its roasting, you saute carrots, celerty, onion and fennel till they are heavily caramelized. When the lamb is roasted so it is clearly crusted you put it in a braising pot along with the vegetables, fresh tomatoes (crushed by hand) and parsley stems along with the veal stock made the day before.. Then it all sits covered in the braising pot for 2 hours in a 300 degree oven. When it comes out, you strain the stock, discard the vegetables. You set the lamb aside to allow it to cool. The stock is refrigerated and lamb, once cooled is pulled apart with forks, and is also refrigerated.

Day 3 is the day to eat. There are two things to do. One is to make fresh pasta for the tagliatelle needed for the dish. My strategy was to make it a little thicker than fettucine but about 4 x the width. Then you build the sauce with crushed Italian tomatoes.

The Tagliatelle is perfection. Now the sauce is getting friendly with the tomatoes, then the lamb goes in and from there w build the ragu.

Skimming the fat off the stock, and then allowing it to come together with the Italian tomatoes before adding the pulled lamb, gets the dish to the place where you can set some aside for another meal. After that, you build out the final dish with a few ladles of the ragu. To finish the dish, you add butter, Italian parsley, white pepper, salt and ultimately, the tagliatelle

You let the pasta sit in the sauce for a minute before serving and then to serve, you load pasta onto the plate, cover it in the ragu sauce and finish with tarragon and a little olive oil.

It’s not just a beautiful dish. It is spectacular. The way the tagliatelle with it’s soft folds invites the sauce. The depth of flavor that the process creates. The hints of fennel, the brightness of the tarragon, and pure perfection of the bite of the pasta. I loved this dish and will keep in in the rotation!

To be honest, I literally licked my plate clean! I will make one more note. To accompany the dish, I made the tomato, red onion and avocado salad that is literally like putting a gazpacho in your mouth between bites! It too is a winner.

Because it is a fairly significant cook, there will be at least 2 more meals for us to look forward to. This is what was left after the meal for us to save for later.What is great about this is that to get to the finished dish from here is very simple. It gives me a chance to tighten up the sauce a tad too.

As I have said many times now, every single dish I make from Frankie’s Sputino kitchen companion and cooking manual is brilliant. Honestly, the evening was a full culinary symphony — from the pasta to the ragu to the salad and wine, it all flowed together beautifully.

Heather kept saying, “I ma having a moment!” as she dug into her plate.

Food was an interesting thing for me in those days.

I usually ate millie pap and gravy for breakfast made by the maid. She used sour porridge and made the yummiest savory stew to go along with it. To this day I still prefer a savory breakfast. For lunch I often had a cheese sandwich or a hot dog sandwich or my favorite toasted cheese and tomato. Yum! I still make toasted cheese and tomato at every opportunity, and I have been working on a refined version of millie pap and gravy.

We also had a puffed wheat cereal that I ate dry by the handful. I hav enot been able to find anything like it in America.

My mom used to say that I “only ate three things”. Lamb chops, grilled prawns and Chinese food. Which was defintely true.

Sunday nights we usually had chops and chips (lamb chops and French fries) – I loved those meals, still do.

We had a formal dining room and ate dinner as a family served by Abbiott, the Gardner by day, white-coated waiter by night. My mom had a little bell and would ring for the servants to bring the next course or take away dirty dishes. We literally ate 3 course meals every day. Nobody was allowed to leave the table till everyone was done and I always struggled to finish what my mom dished up for me. I Remember people sitting staring – glaring at me really – saying “eat Neil” over and over while I ignored them. I sometimes would get my cold dinner from the night before, for breakfast the next day. It wasn’t always like that. We all used to fight over the bone marrow in the soup, the roasted potatoes, and the bread-and-blood drippings when Meat was carved. I still have a serious craving for those tidbits.

What is so odd about that, is that today I have a very expanded and developed palate. I eat pretty much everything, and my self-expression is that I LOVE to play in the kitchen!

For example:

• My Life as a Chef
• The Pizza Quest
• Our Soup Journey