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Lemons, I have a close friend who's just like you. She's a good cook -- adventurous and inventive -- but she's deathly afraid of pie crust and bread dough. But you do not need a food processor to make a good pie crust (or bread, for that matter). I use a simple pastry blender these days, but for decades I got by with just a dinner fork, which is what my mother used. You and thousands of others have convinced yourself that pie crust is hard and intimidating, but it isn't. Now, if you add too much water you'll end up with goo, and if you work the dough too much you'll end up with cardboard. Two things to consider: substitute a little vinegar for some of the ice water (I usually use 2 Tbsp white vinegar to about 4 Tbsp ice water for a 2-crust pie), which makes the dough easier to handle; and roll out the crust between sheets of wax paper, flipping it now and then. "Serious" bakers scorn that practice, but you don't get flour all over the place and it makes it easy to put the second crust in place. If I'm making a dessert pie, I add a couple of tablespoons of sugar to the dough to counter the vinegar, which I can't taste but which friends can detect; if I'm making a savory dish (quiche, pot pie) I omit the sugar.

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.

Many years ago, my wife and I flew to London with our 2-year-old (our one and only trip to Europe, alas) and then met some friends at a country inn in Kent. An attraction of the inn was a small but splendid restaurant. Our friends, Nancy and Rob, were stationed in France at the time, and they had ferried their 2 young children and their au pair across the Channel in 2 automobiles to meet us. The inn was our base for exploring the south of England before we returned to France with them. One day, our 2 vehicles were involved in a mishap in a roundabout, in which 1 of the vehicles was rendered inoperable. My wife, Rob, and the au pair used the operable vehicle to return with the 3 children to the inn, and I stayed behind with Nancy to attend to the damaged car and secure a rental car. The mishap occurred late in the afternoon of the Saturday before Easter, which complicated matters considerably because most repair shops were closed for the long weekend. It also was raining. When we finally returned to the inn, it was very late. But the innkeeper was waiting for us, having learned of our predicament from the other members of our group, and he had 2 snifters of Scotch in hand. And then he informed us that he had asked the chef to stay late in order to serve us dinner, long after all the other customers had departed. Twenty-five years later, I have no idea what we ate, but the extraordinary thoughtfulness of the innkeeper still brings tears to my eyes. Perhaps the chef was cursing us (and the innkeeper) all the while, but perhaps not.

That's interesting to know that the melon we commonly call a cantaloupe actually is a muskmelon. I had no idea! Then again, I've never willingly purchased one by either name, and I pay them no attention in the store. That's because I developed an aversion at a very early age to the orange-fleshed melon, as it was part of the "healthy breakfast" that my mother used to make me eat before school -- "cantaloupe," oatmeal or eggs, toast, orange juice, milk -- a time of the day when I wasn't interested in food of any kind (because of school-induced anxiety). So I have learned to associate orange-fleshed melons (and oatmeal) with a feeling of impending gastric disaster. Fifty years later, if I'm going to purchase and eat a melon, it is NOT going to have orange-colored flesh. But she meant well.