Jaggery Brownies

Rich, chocolatey brownies...and eventually we're going to get to them.

A little while ago, Christa mentioned that she had a particular craving for some baked goods...not bread, though, something more along the lines of a pastry.  As I try my best to oblige her, the very next week I had baked some personal venison pies.

Swing and a miss...

This, apparently, was not what she had in mind. She wanted something like a cookie, or a cake, or maybe even a sweet puff pastry, but not a savory meat pie.  OK, back to the drawing board.  I will admit that I'm not much of a dessert aficionado.  I like chocolate, and I do like ice cream on occasion, but I don't really like cake or sweet pastry (with the rare exception of some pies) or cookies or brownies.

Then, inspiration came in the form of a one pound block of very fine unsweetened chocolate from my good friend, Tricia.  She's a fine artist with her own webpage that I recommend you check out while you're here.  Go ahead; I'll be here when you're done.  She needs to update it, right?

Anyway, she picked up a luscious block of rich dark goodness while she was at the store recently, and was kind enough to gift it to me on my return from a recent vacation weekend.  She's cool like that.  I decided that this was a good opportunity to try making brownies.  I was going to kill four birds with one stone:  make a baked dessert for my love without any questionable ingredients, try out the chocolate, test out the jaggery that I had recently received from Pure Indian Foods,  and attempt making brownies from scratch (something that I have never been inclined to do in the past).

I found the simplest recipe for brownies that I could which utilized real chocolate and also roughly conformed to the types of food that I prefer to prepare (no vegetable fats, etc...).  I came across this recipe and decided to run with it.  It's mostly just chocolate, butter, eggs, a minute amount of flour, sugar, and salt.  I would replace the sugar with jaggery as I try to avoid refined sugars in anything that I make.  There's a certain level of compromise inherent between the culinary preferences of Christa and myself, and sweeteners is one place where I need to get creative on occasion.  My baby does love to have her sweet tooth satisfied, whereas I could easily not keep anything sweet in the house.  Maple syrup, raw honey, dates, and (hopefully) jaggery help me to bridge the gap between satisfying her desires and providing food that I can feel good about.  This is supposed to be a dessert, anyway.

Finally, we can get on to the brownies themselves.  No, actually we need to take a look at the jaggery.  It's unlike anything that I have used before in baking.  Baking sometimes give me grief, as unlike cooking in general, baking often requires a certain level of exactness in the ratio of ingredients in order to succeed.  I was chartering new territory with a recipe that I had never tested on a dish I had never made and was already planning to substitute one of the main ingredients with something that I had only recently heard of.  Great plan.  Here's the jaggery:

 

 

 It came vacuum sealed in a plastic bag, which was a fine way to ship it.  I cut open the bag to get a closer look.

The smell was sweet and rich with molasses.  It was a little bit sticky, and not at all inclined to come out of the pouch, so I set about dumping/scraping it out with a spoon onto a plate.

The website for the product shows that jaggery as a firm block that can be grated by hand and used like a very coarse granulated sugar.  This was not a firm block.  Some of it was firmer and drier than other parts, and the moisture content obviously varied throughout the jaggery.  My kitchen was no warmer than 65F, so I don't feel like that should have been an issue regarding the consistency.

I decided to treat it more like a really moist brown sugar, and rather than attempt to grate it or use it in a 1:1 ratio of replacement for the cup of white sugar that the original recipe called for, that I would loosely pack it into a measuring cup and cut the amount down to 3/4 of a cup.

Here's my little lump of jaggery.  Sugar puck.

The jaggery is very sweet and also extremely rich, so I didn't want it to overpower the chocolate.  I just decided to go with my intuition, which was somehow at odds with my inner baking voice (IT NEEDS TO BE EXACT!  DON'T MESS WITH THE INGREDIENT RATIOS!).  I was now the Christopher Columbus of brownies; charting unknown waters of dessert baking that had actually been charted by thousands of people before me.

Now that that ordeal was over, I preheated to oven to 325 and started baking.  First thing first was to butter and then flour a 8x8" baking dish.  I wanted it to be ready when I needed it, and not the other way around.

rubbed with plenty of butter, and whatever flour sticks

The next two ingredients are something that I know a thing or six about.  I shaved two ounces of chocolate and combined them with a full stick of pastured butter.

Oh yes.

 These I melted in a saucepan over very low heat, taking care not to actually cook them.  Once melted I removed the saucepan from the heat.

 I then combined the jaggery and two pastured chicken eggs in a glass bowl and whisked them together as best as I could.  The jaggery resisted the eggs, but ultimately its resistance was futile (sorry, I had to).

still a little bit chunky, but mostly combined

  To the sugar and eggs I added some vanilla.  Real vanilla, please.  A little bit goes a long way, so there's really no need to go for an artificially vanilla-flavored product.  You'll be letting yourself down, you'll be letting me down, and you should probably feel bad about both of those things.

the good stuff

I tempered the egg/sugar/vanilla mixture by adding a little bit of the hot butter/chocolate and stirring thoroughly.  This step will prevent the formation of chocolaty scrambled eggs.

 

I then poured the tempered mixture into the saucepan with the remaining chocolate and butter.

To this, I added 1/4 cup of flour and 1/4 teaspoon of fine dry sea salt.

Whisk the hell out of that to combine until everything is really smooth....

...and then pour the batter into the baking dish.

Place the dish into the hot oven for 40 minutes, and then let cool completely.  The bubbles are indicative of the fact that it is indeed cooked.  You won't be able to use a toothpick test on these as they are very fudgy (as opposed to cake-like brownies, which I really don't like as a function of not liking cake).  

One they are cool, all you have to do is slice them, stack them, and then take unrealistically presented photographs of brownies stacked on your kitchen table.  So fancy!

  Oh, wait, actually there's the big blob of sticky jaggery that you must figure out how to contain (I put it into a ziploc freezer bag and stuck it on the shelf until next time) and a sink that is now filled with dirty dishes because you made brownies from scratch instead of opening a packet.

It's cool, I got this.

The verdict?  They seem to be pretty good.  I tried a couple of them, and Trish gave her seal of approval in the gym today.  The jaggery increases the depth of flavor, and the amount that I used definitely produced a sweet brownie but it was not cloyingly so.  The real test will be when Christa tries them out this week, as she has been very busy this weekend away obtaining her AASI instructor certification.  I'm very proud of her for that, so I want to have something baked for her when she returns...and not a meat pie.

Jaggery Brownies

• 3/4 cup jaggery
• 2 eggs
• 8 ounces of butter
• 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp sea salt (fine dry)

1. Melt chocolate and butter in saucepan that is large enough for all ingredients.  Remove from heat.
2. Combine eggs, jaggery, and vanilla.  Temper and then incorporate into the chocolate and butter pan.  Whisk in the flour and salt.  Stir thoroughly to combine all ingredients.
3. Pour into a buttered and floured 8" x 8" baking dish and bake at 325F for 40 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool completely before serving.
4. Wash all of those dishes.  

Creamy Potato Bacon Soup

 This soup really is a heavily bastardized version of caldo verde.  I'm very familiar with this fact, as I started out a few years ago making caldo verde, and it has finally evolved into this slightly different version that you see below.  I like the play of the bacon to the potatoes more so than any sausage that I have tried, and a good quality raw cheddar cheese seemed like a natural topping for a soup that already tasted like a bacon stuffed baked potato.

To start, get yourself a big sack of potatoes.  I would highly recommend going with a gold potato or even a red potato, as baking or russet potatoes don't really lend themselves well to this recipe.  Below you'll see that I went with some beautiful yukon golds.

Yukon Gold, baby.

Due to the fact that I happened to be in the midst of making a chicken stock while preparing this soup, I scrubbed the potatoes very well so that I could save the skins to add to the stock.  I then set up a peeling station, because 5 pounds of #1 potatoes takes a while to peel.  Once peeled, I put the potatoes into a large bowl filled with cold water and some ascorbic acid.  I did this to prevent them from oxidizing while I was working on the rest of the ingredients (of which there really aren't many).  Some lemon juice in the water, or even just the plain cold water by itself would work fine if you don't have any ascorbic acid or vitamin C laying around.  I did.

My dad used to tell me how much fun he had peeling potatoes in the navy.

Once the potatoes were peeled, I then cut them in half lengthwise and then into 1/4" thick slices.  I returned the slices of potato to the large bowl of cold water.  After that, I chopped this marvelous 18 ounce pack of thick, apple-wood smoked bacon into a small dice.

Bacon has magical properties on the internet, right?

I then tossed the diced bacon into a very large pan and let it brown.

Looking Good

Looking Better.  We can just stop here, right?

After the bacon got crispy, I removed it and placed it in a small bowl to just hang out for a while.  I also drained most of the bacon grease out of the pan.  This bacon grease went into the fridge, where it is still performing feats of awesomeness, such as frying eggs or being slathered all over whole chickens before roasting.  I did leave a few tablespoons of the bacon grease in the pan, and to this I added the drained potato slices.

While the potatoes were frying in the bacon fat...hang on, let me just savor the thought...I poured the liquid that I had used to soak the potatoes into a small saucepan and reduced it in volume to roughly one quart.  I was going to need some extra liquid, and rather than just add water I thought that it would be much more sensible to use the water that was already full of potato starch and any other enrichment that may have leached out of the potatoes while they were soaking.  Once the potatoes had browned just slightly, I poured this reduced liquid into the potato pan.

I also added a quart of rich beef stock for a heavy dose of nutrients and some excellent background flavor notes.  Chicken stock would work very well, too. 

If I can put bone stock into something, I will put bone stock into something.

Once the potatoes were well established in copious amounts of liquid, I turned the heat down and let them simmer while I ate all of the bacon.  Just kidding.  I simmered the potatoes until they were very soft, and then blended them along with the cooking liquid until velvety smooth.  I incorporated the bacon pieces back into the creamed potatoes and poured the whole mess into my slow cooker in order to let the flavors meld together for a few hours at a low temperature.  You don't need to use a slow cooker, but I did so that I could just walk away from the whole operation without fear of having anything burn.

Just hanging out and getting friendly

At some point in time I think that I took a nap.  I undoubtedly wasted some time on the internet.  However, I'm sure that I took a large bunch of lacinato kale that I had washed and sliced the rubs out of the leaves before cutting leaves into fairly fine slices.  I used lacinato kale because it sounds much more pretentious than regular kale.  Regular kale is for chumps, right?  This is a blog about food, so I felt obligated to opt for the fancier version of this robust leafy green.  Feel free to use regular kale when you make your own version, but be sure to tell your friends and loved ones that you used regular old kale because you truly don't give a damn about them.  Meanwhile I will continue to use my fancy kale.

OK, the lacinato is also a darker color and is not as crinkly, so it does look a lot better in soups like this.  That's actually what drew me to it in the first place.  Anyway, shortly before it's time to serve, stir the sliced kale into the soup and just cook it for about 10-15 minutes at most.  It will turn a very mice shade of green and be soft without totally falling apart.  The soup is very rich and savory, and the sturdy green of the kale (lacinato or otherwise) juxtaposes this in a wonderful way.  I elected to top the soup with some freshly shredded raw cheddar cheese, which was very good, or you can omit the cheese and just enjoy it how it is.  I put it into a hot thermos and sent it off with Christa for lunch.

So, in summary:

Creamy Potato Bacon Soup

Ingredients:

• 5 lbs of yellow potatoes
• 16-18 ounces of good thick cut bacon
• 1 quart of beef stock
• 1 head of lacinato kale (or regular kale)
• cheddar cheese to taste (optional)

1)  Peel potatoes and place in bowl of cool water with some vitamin C (to prevent oxidation)
2)  Cut potatoes into 1/4" thick slices and return to water to continue soaking.
3)  Dice the bacon and fry until crispy.  Remove the bacon from the pan, and reserve all but 2-3 tablespoons of the bacon grease for other projects.  In this 2-3 tablespoons of grease, toss the sliced potatoes to brown.  Meanwhile, reduce the soaking water to roughly one quart in volume.
4)  Once potatoes are brown, add reduced water and beef stock.  Simmer until the potatoes are soft.
5)  Blend the potatoes in their cooking liquid until smooth.  Add the bacon to this and simmer for a few hours to meld the flavors together.  I used a slow cooker for this part of the process because it was just much easier than manning a pot.
6)  Shortly before serving, stir the sliced kale into the soup to cook.  It won't take long for the kale to turn emerald green.  Ladle into bowls and top with shredded cheddar cheese.

Carrot Soup

I like to make simple creamy soups our of root vegetables or squash combined with a meat stock base.  My go-to vegetable is butternut squash in chicken stock, but as Christa is not a fan of that particular gourd, this time I tried carrots for a similar effect.  The addition of ginger plays well with the roasted carrots, and the real cream turns the soup into a velvety meal.

To make this soup, you will need the following:

• 2.5 lbs of carrots
• 10 cloves of garlic
• 4 or 5 sprigs of fresh rosemary
• 1 quart of chicken stock
• olive oil
• butter
• 1/2 of a large white onion
• 1 cup of heavy cream (preferably non-homogenized grass-fed)
• 1 cup of ginger infused water*
• herbes de provence

1.  Peel the carrots and chop into large rounds.  Place them in a baking dish along with the garlic and rosemary.  Drizzle just a little bit of olive oil on top, and put them into a 375F oven for an hour to roast.  Discard the rosemary afterwards and put vegetables aside.
2. Dice the onion very finely and saute in a large saucepan with about a tablespoon of butter.  When the onion is very soft and translucent but not browned, pour the stock into the pot and add the roasted vegetables and herbes.  Simmer this gently until the carrots are soft and mushy.
3. Take an emulsion blender and begin to liquify the contents of the pot.  At this time, add the ginger water (it will help to increase the volume of liquid while you are blending).  Once the soup is smooth, turn off the heat and use the blender to incorporate the cream.

carrots, garlic, and rosemary all ready for the oven

After blending all of the ingredients, it's ready to serve.

That's all there is to it.  The soup is warm, creamy, and just a little bit sweet, however the sweetness is cut by the ginger which is in turn mellowed slightly be the cream.  Pack it in a hot thermos to take for lunch with a couple of hard boiled eggs, enjoy a steaming cup of soup on a cold evening, or just pour it on your lap.

-J


*Ginger infused water:  Take a finger of ginger, peel it, and dice if up into very small cubes.  Place it in a heat safe container (I like to use a thermos for this as it holds the heat longer) and pour 2-3 cups of boiling water over the ginger.  Let it steep for several hours.

I was thinking about using this for my desktop wallpaper...

Fried Shrimp

Fried shrimp...it might conjure up the image of some butterflied shrimp tails covered in breading and then deep fried in some frightening trans-fat laden vegetable oil and served with a lackluster side of mediocre tartar sauce and a lemon wedge.  Well, if that's the image that came into your mind before you saw the photo above, I'm here to set the record straight, because this is how you do fried shrimp. 

It's fast, it's easy, and if you have never had shrimp this way it will probably change your opinion on this humble crustacean.  The ingredients are few, but quality is especially important here.

Start with some large whole shrimp.  Whole shrimp!  Don't just buy the tails and call it a day.  The body is where all of the flavor is, so get about a pound (depending on how many you are serving) of very fresh whole shrimp from your local merchant of choice.

You'll also need some quality rendered leaf lard.  I render my own from a local farm that sells the hard kidney fat from their whey and acorn fed pigs.  The rendering process takes a little while, but it is very easy and you can produce a lot of lard and store it in the freezer for a long time.  Lard is excellent for frying because it is heat stable, does not impart any flavor, and makes food incredibly crispy.  In fact, I eat the entire shrimp when cooking them in lard (head, body, tail, shell, legs, eyeballs..everything).

Wash the shrimp under cool water and pat dry.  Toss them with seasoning of you choice (I used a paprika and celery based mixed seasoning from my favorite local spice shop for these, but salt and pepper are great as well).  Heat about 1/4" deep layer of lard in a stainless steel or cast iron skillet and add the shrimp carefully into the oil.  Take care not to crowd them; it is better to cook them in several small batches than to overload the pan.

Cooking time really depends on the size of the shrimp, but fortunately they have a built in cooking indicator.  When you see that the shrimp have turned pink just a little bit more than halfway up their sides, flip them over and cook for a few more minutes until the entire shrimp is pink and crispy.  The meat should be cooked through but not tough, and the shells will be so crisp that you can eat these whole (and I suggest that you do at least try it for full effect).
Simply remove from the oil and serve hot.  This is serious 'finger food', so keep your sides simple.  Some broccoli or even brussels sprouts would make a good pairing.

Everything on this plate is edible; from the crispy shells to the tasty guts

Venison and Barley

 Sometimes it pays to cook all of the components of a dish together, especially if it is a slow cooked meal.  However, other times it is preferable to cook a dish such as this in separate stages in order to get the most out of each component of the recipe.  This works better as the latter.  The use of a slow cooker and cooking in stages makes the actual active cooking time fairly short and spread out.

Ingredients:

• 3-4 lbs of venison leg roasts, cut into large chunks (or any other red meat)
• 4 cups of beef stock
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 10 cloves of garlic, whole
• 2 cups of barley
• 1 pound of mushrooms (shitake and crimini) 
• Fresh rosemary 

1)  Start off by browning the meat in a large pan with some tallow.  Any red meat would be fine, I used venison because I have a freezer nearly filled with it.  Beef, lamb, horse, goat, or any other red meat would work just as well for this.  Transfer the now browned meat to a slow cooker and add the onions, garlic, and stock.  Cook this on low overnight (or for 8-10 hours).  Remove everything from the slow cooker except the stock and reserve.

Put the meat, onions, and garlic in the refrigerator for now.

2)  Par boil the barley in a large pot of water.  I always partially cook barley before I put it into a soup or a stew because it has an ungodly capacity for liquid absorption.  In fact, this dish was going to be a stew, at least conceptually.  While you are doing this, clean the mushrooms and cut into a rough dice.  Add them to the stock along with the rosemary and the drained barley.

mushrooms float; barley sinks

3)  Cook the mushrooms and the barley for another 8-10 hours in the slow cooker.  The barley will probably have absorbed all of the stock from the pot, and you will have only a mix of barley and mushrooms.  I feel like no matter how much stock I would have started with, the barley would have just sucked it all up.  This is fine, really, as all of the flavor and nutrients of the beef stock have been incorporated into the barley, which in and of itself is pretty bland.  Remove the rosemary at this time, unless you enjoy picking little sticks and hard leaves out of your teeth later. 

the stock has been completely incorporated into the barley and mushrooms

4)  Shred the venison and add it back into the slow cooker along with the onions and garlic.  Stir everything together and allow the meat to heat up.  Plate into a heated serving bowl.  Rosemary makes a good garnish.  You can pour some more heated stock over this when you serve it if you'd prefer a more soup-like presentation.  I served up the first batch as pictured below, but later on I ended up adding anther quart of stock cut with some water just to have more of a soup...the barley absorbed most of this liquid, too, when I put those leftovers in the fridge.

Cookie Dough

These aren't really cookie dough...if you bake them, they will not turn into cookies.  However, they taste remarkably similar to actual chocolate chip cookie dough, but are composed of fuit, nuts, and (gasp) some actual chocolate chips. 

This is way more than a serving size

I know that I got the inspiration for a date/nut based snack bar from somewhere on the internet that I cannot remember at this time and I apparently forgot to bookmark it.  However, I tweaked this one a bit, and I'm sure that the place that I first read about it didn't invent it, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. 

Ingredients are as follows:

• 2 cups whole medjool dates, pitted
• 1 cup whole almonds
• 1 cup whole pecans (or crushed if that's what you have; it really doesn't matter in this recipe)
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1/2 cup finely shredded coconut
• 1 tsp real vanilla extract

1. Put the dates, almonds, and pecans into a food processor and process them until they begin to look like a coarse paste.
2. As the mixture starts looking pasty, pour in the coconut oil, coconut, and vanilla extract
3. The contents of your blender should be a paste by this point in time.  Dump out into a bowl and stir in the chocolate chips.  It would be tempting to just throw the chips into the food processor and let your handy dandy kitchen gadget do all of the work.  Don't.  It will pulverize your chocolate chips, and the resultant heat of friction will also melt them and just make a big mess.  Yes, I am speaking to you from experience at this point.
4. Press the mixture into a baking dish lined with a sheet of wax paper.  It doesn't have to be a baking dish, as you won't actually be baking these.  It could be a serving dish, or a platter with high sides, a large tupperware container, a firm hat, or a pair of crocs...so long as you can easily remove the bars from the container once they have cooled down and become firm.  Once that happens, pop the sheet of "dough" out onto a cutting board and cut into portions.  I wrapped them in foil for easy transportation.

I'd sell out my own brother and sisters to a stranger in a sledge for a tray full of these.

Oh, so the chocolate chips that I bought happened to be organic.  Fancy, right?  I almost mentioned that in the ingredients list...like, "your chocolate chips must be organic, or this whole recipe will be a giant bowl of fail".   I don't really have a firm stance on the benefits of organic chocolate chips, as I have not done much research on the topic.  I didn't even buy organic chips to be hip and/or cool.  I bought them because they were available in the bulk bin of my grocery store, whereas I would have otherwise had to buy an entire bag of 'regular' chips.  Since this is not an ingredient that I keep on hand regularly, I opted to just purchase a cup of the fancy chips, which I'm sure I ended up spending as much money on as I would have if I got a whole pound bag of the non-organic.  /rant

-J

Sautéed Brussels Sprouts

Our meals might seem very animal-centric.  This is because they are; I make sure that Christa and I both eat a variety of wild game, fish, pasture raised beef and chickens, and most of their organs as well.  We eat soups and sauces made from bone stocks, and regularly enjoy good eggs, milk, yogurts, and cheeses. 

That's not to say that we don't have plenty of fresh plant matter daily - we do, both cooked and raw.  It's just not typically as glamorous, so I'm less apt to blog about it.  This post is about some vegetables.  Nice, leafy vegetables, cooked quickly that make a great side dish to just about any hot meal.

So, without further ado, here's a surefire method of preparing Brussels Sprouts.  (That's Brussels Sprouts, not brussel sprouts)

Ingredients:

• ~1 dry pint of Brussels Sprouts; cleaned and halved
• 4 cloves of garlic, sliced into coins
• 1 T of good butter
• 1 T of olive oil
• Salt and Pepper

1. Melt the fats together in a skillet that has a tight fitting lid (leave the lid off for now).  
2. Add the garlic and toss quickly.  As soon as it begins to brown, place all of the Brussels Sprouts cut side down into the hot pan.  Do not disturb them for 4-5 minutes while the cut sides brown.
3. Toss the pan to flip the sprouts over (they don't all need to flip, don't worry about that) and then pour just a small amount of hot water (roughly 1/8 cup) into the pan and put the lid on.  Steam the sprouts for another 5 minutes to cook them through until they are tender.  
4. Remove the lid, boil off the water, toss once more to coat everything and plate the garlic and sprouts in a warmed bowl. 

They make a fine summertime side dish for shrimp and vegetables.

Ox Tail Tomato Sauce

 

I'll admit that I have very little experience with making Italian style pasta sauces, especially red sauces, but I wanted very much to make a sauce that not only tastes rich and comforting for Christa (who truly appreciates a good bowl of pasta), but would also be loaded with minerals, vitamins, and quality protein as well.  

 

For this, I decided to use an oxtail.  Why an oxtail?  Well, the short of the matter was that I already had the tail thawed out and ready to use, but with no beef stock on hand (whoops), my original plan of braising it as a stew was not destined to come to fruition.  What I ended up with was far better.

It was very good over pasta, but even better served over seared beef liver.

Ingredients:

• One ox tail
• A bottle of red wine (like Cabernet Sauvignon in this case)
• 40 ounces of diced tomatoes (approximately)
• Half of a large onion
• 6 cloves finely diced garlic
• Dried oregano and basil

broiled ox tail

1. Clean ox tail and place under broiler for just long enough to brown the meat.  The one that I used took only ~8 minutes to get some good color on it.  Remove the tail from your oven and let sit on the counter to cool enough for handling while you proceed with the base of the sauce.
2. Pour 2 cups of wine into a sauce pot, and add the garlic and herbs.  Let this come to a boil to remove the alcohol.  Add the tomatoes and reduce to just barely a simmer.  
3. Cut the ox tail into individual joint pieces and submerge them in the sauce.  Ensure that the pot will not come to a full boil (lots of steam and an occasional bubble breaking the surface are all that you're going for here.  Braise the tail pieces in the sauce for about 8 hours.  This is a good overnight process
4. Remove the tail pieces from the sauce and pick all of the meat off of the bones.  Place the meat in a container and reserve in the refrigerator for now.  
5. Dice the onion and saute in a little bit of tallow.  Add this to the sauce, and place the whole pot of sauce in the refrigerator to sit during the next phase of cooking.
6. Take the bone pieces and bits of connective tissue leftover from the tails and place them in a small saucepan.  Add about a cup of wine to this pan, and enough water to completely submerge the bones.  Bring to a rapid boil for about 5 minutes, and then reduce heat to just barely a simmer.  Let this simmer for 8 more hours to soften the bones and draw out more nutrients from the stock.  By now, the bones should be losing some of their integrity.  I pulled them out at this point and mashed them with the poll of an axe before returning them to the wine for a few more hours in order to maximize the surface area.
7. By now, you will have drained all of the minerals, vitamins, and flavor from the bones.  Strain the wine 'stock' through a cheese cloth and return to the saucepan.  Reduce to 1/3 original volume and then combine with the tomato sauce and meat that you had reserved earlier.  Let this simmer for a few more hours on low to allow the flavors to meld.  Toss with pasta and top with the shavings of a good aged raw milk cheese.

broiled tail pieces set into the wine to braise

Add enough tomatoes to submerge the meat.

slow cooked beef; picked off of the bones