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My bolognese takes most of one afternoon, but it is worth it. 3 days? Gimme a break.

I've got to agree with Kenji -- although this recipe sounds good, it does sound more like a version of Italian-American gravy than Bolognese sauce. From the introduction to the recipe in Italian Classics, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated (Boston Common Press, 2002): "Unlike meat sauces in which tomatoes dominate... Bolognese sauce is about the meat, with the tomatoes in a supporting role. Bolognese also differs from many tomato-based meat sauces in that it contains dairy -- butter, milk, and/or cream. The dairy gives the meat an especially sweet, appealing flavor."

I make Bolognese sauce often. My everyday version is based on Marcella Hazan's in the revised edition of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, and my fancy recipe is from The Complete Book of Pasta by Jack Denton Scott (Galahad Books, 1968). Hazan and Clark both use nutmeg as a key flavor (in small amounts), and they do not brown the meat, either. They also use white wine, not red. And there is NO garlic. Clark adds some mushrooms and chopped chicken liver. Either of these recipes takes about 3 or 4 hours from start to finish. When it's done to my liking, the sauce is salmon-colored. If it's red, I've used too much tomato or too little cream.

Interestingly, the recipe in The Sliver Spoon (touted on its cover as "the bible of authentic Italian cooking") uses butter but no milk or cream. In The Food of Italy, Waverly Root describes Bolognese ragu as "an unctuous blend of onions, carrots, finely chopped pork and veal, butter, and tomato." He adds that ragu is often richer than his description of the basic recipe, and I suspect the richness comes from liberal use of milk and/or cream. I usually use both -- adding milk toward the beginning, after I've taken the redness out of the meat but without browning it, and a bit of cream just before serving.

@mr guy - LOL this was my first thought too!
I bet each and every difficult and time consuming step is recognized in each bite! mmmmmmmmm
cant wait to make a batch this weekend!

I don't know if I am reading this recipe wrong but... when cutting the meat to marinade it states to cut the brisket along the grain in 2" pieces,(I'm thinking in strips) it does not say to cube the meat(which the author did) which would be much smaller pieces and much harder to fish out each time. Anyone?

Anyone who thinks a 3 day bolognese is worth the effort is welcome to come to my house anytime they like. I'll even buy the wine.

Funny, I make cheesecake pops when I have a chunk of cheesecake that's too big to toss but too small to serve on its own. First I shove a plastic spoon into a big chunk of cheesecake, then dunk it in melted chocolate, then put it in the freezer. I served a tray of these things and all I heard were moans of pleasure. (My cheesecake is made from scratch. I've seen Shamdra Lee do this where she murders a frozen cheesecake with a scoop, winding up with a cheesecake carcass.)

Re: Soup Sips - do you mean in small cups? That does seem rather silly. I like to serve "dessert bites" on Chinese porcelain spoons. Even if you have 2 it's not like wolfing down an entire dessert - but you get to have a tasty sweet in small measure.

candidly, i quite agree with most of the list. i appreciate the "response" you offer here (but generally don't agree with you). many foodies i know have been grumbling about the "trends" identified in the Chicago Tribune piece for some time.... there is a lot of pretension and indulgence in the food world and i think it is a good thing for a provocative commentator to offer a "reality check" from time to time....

and you reference the Tribune piece as the "bashing of supposed elites"... "supposed"???? excuse me? who else but "elites" can afford $40 "bistro" entrees and most of the restaurants that feature "foam" and "molecular gastronomy"?

I completely agree with number 9 and 4 - Molecular Gastronomy and Foam! I went to wd-50 for a friend's birthday celebration about a year ago and it was a truly horrifying experience. I ordered the foie gras "gravel" (essentially foie gras that was freeze dried and then shattered with a hammer) and a fish dish and shared a dessert with the table. All of the dishes were too tiny for a proper meal and all covered in or accompanied with foam, I went home with a horrible stomach ache. My boyfriend and I both rolled on the bed feeling the pain of eating dishes of science experiments. I wanted to like wd-50 but I am sorry to say I can't and I won't.

@ScoutinSpokane - sounds like something that might be good for the toaster oven.

Kenji,

The heat transfer rate/area = (coefficient of thermal conductivity)*(T_bath-T_egg)/distance

The equation is the same regardless of the medium. The dependence on the medium comes from the thermal conductivity coefficient.

Also, I agree with you that we are the only two involved in this conversation right now :)

@pookay

p.s. All of this is starting to remind me why thermodynamics was my second least favorite class in college :)

Kenji,
The contradition I pointed out still stands no matter what constants are involved since any constant divided by zero is still infinity.

The rate of heating per area is proportional to the temperature difference and inversely proportional to the distance (this actually means that in the instant right after the cool egg is put in the boiling water, the rate of heat transfer to the outer surface of the egg is infinite; note that this is not a paradox since an infinite rate times an infinitely small time interval is still a finite amount of heat). The temperature itself is not inversely proportional to the distance (or the square of the distance); solving the rate equation, the temperature approaches that of the boiling water exponentially fast with time so that if you wait long enough the whole egg will be the same temperature as the bath. The distance to the heat bath appears only in the exponent, so that the closer to the bath, the faster the temperature changes.