I hate to post a recipe without a picture, but this was too good to pass up.
This is a commitment meal; while cooking I dirtied a saute pan, a big past boiling pot, and my Le Creuset roaster over the period of about 4 hours. The result, before you add pasta, is a creamy marinara sauce and some darn good chicken.
- 1 -8 ounce can of tomato paste
- 2 -12 ounce cans of diced tomatoes
- 12 ounces of water*
- 2 chicken bouillon cubes*
- 2 beef bouillon cubes*
- About 6 ounces of cream cheese
* I was out of chicken & beef stock, but if I had that I would have simply used a carton of that instead of the water and bullion cubes.
Start by carmelizing a large onion (diced nice and small) and a half dozen cloves of garlic – remember: slow heat, lots of butter and both of these ingredients will melt into your sauce – this took me about 30 minutes. Next brown, but don’t cook, a dozen or so chicken legs and thighs – your choice of meat here. Put all of the above ingridients in a stew pot including the chicken and cook for 2 to 3 hours.
At the end I made a pound of spaghetti. The pasta was partially cooked in water then strained. I put butter back in my stock pot, melted that down and put a bunch of the ragout into the pot – then I put the spaghetti back in and let it finish cooking in the sauce to soak in some fo the deliciousness.
Day two I deboned the legs and mixed the meat into the sauce … ZOMG it’s good. Next time I’ll probably skip the cream cheese, add some red wine, and mix in some beef or lamb shanks to the sauce while it cooks.
