More wine! More butter!

Today lasted forever. I know that 7-5 isn't actually that long a day if you work in the corporate world but when all of those hours are spent with boys between the ages of 12 and 18 it's amazing how they add up. At some point they are going to stop laughing at the verb facio. Any day now.

Happily, my obsessive recipe planning payed off with a five star comfort dish. You start with 100g of butter; next, add four cloves of garlic and 800g of diced tomatoes - the tomato cooks in the butter and smells and tastes divine. It's also a glorious golden light red colour; this deepens towards blood when you add 175 mls of red wine and simmer for 15 minutes. The shade doesn't really come out in the photo, sorry. Then you add another 175 mls of red wine and simmer for another 15 minutes. Because this isn't excessive enough, you then briefly fry thin strips of beef fillet in a separate pan and add it to the sauce. Stir it through a big, grippy pasta and top it with parsley and parmesan. I considered taking a photo of the finished product and posting it but I wanted to eat it too much. I include a photo of the rest of the sauce. Such a deep, sexy, grown-up taste. Only one slight problem; despite doing the batch thing with the meat it still stewed a little. I'm guessing this is due to the freezing/defrosting process: the freezing creates big crystals that break the membranes of the cell walls but plug these holes at the same time; then the crystals melt and let fluids run out. The meat was quite bloody when defrosted. McGee notes that cooked meat suffers less ill-effects as the cellular structure is already a bit messed up and I assume it'd actually help with the intensification of flavours in curries and sauces and things...