Good morning DFO!

Welcome back to Sunday Gravy, also known as the place where I attempt culinary suicide by working my lunatic ass off.

That LIII thing in the title was a surprise to me too. When doing research – is it research if you’re referencing your own recipes? – for next week, I started counting and holy fucking cat shit this will be my 53rd Sunday Gravy post. If you made every recipe then served one once a week I just fed you for over a year! You also probably took 5 years off of your life, doubled your triglyceride count and advanced a few belt sizes.

Jesus. 53!

Now ain’t that just a thing?

I hope all of you had the chance to check out our new weekly food feature Midweek Rations designed to help you cook quicker weeknight menus. Outstanding work on the new feature Romonobyl!

Romonobyl has a great concept for his feature and I loved the fact that he referenced Sunday Gravy as “ambitious.” Yer fuckin’ A right man. Perfect description.

Ready to get ambitious?

Yep. This is another in a long line of Italian recipes where I just basically lose my fucking mind. I think of it as research. Delicious, delicious research to help you, the home cook, come up with dishes that will amaze you and your family.

Today’s dish features THREE count ’em three separate Italian disciplines that are all made from scratch. If you were able to just master one of them you would be well on your way to culinary fame. Master two and you become King Chef Italian Badass, a real, just made up honorarium. Master all 3? Hell, maybe YOU should be cooking for me.

As you regular readers know I love to cook Italian. Hell most of this current season has been Italian but every once in awhile I get all inspired and try and do every fucking thing.

Remember this motherfucker? That’s the baked ziti where I had the two day sauce and made my own cheese like a maniac.

How about this one? Yes sir, that is scratch made gnocchi and homemade pesto. That shit was fucking delicious!

What I’m doing today is real similar to this old favorite. Oh yeah, that’s the one. That’s where I made homemade lasagne with the 6 hour bolognese and the homemade pasta and shit.

I hope you like links to old articles because I don’t feel like writing down shit I already done writ. I will guide you through the whole process and I’ve got a bunch of pictures to guide you.

One more reminder: Do I have Italian blood and/or ancestry in me?

Not a goddamn drop. I just love Italian food.

Today’s three lessons are: an 8 hour red sauce or Sunday Gravy, fresh homemade pasta, and straight out of the motherfucking skillet chicken parmesan.

Oh my.

Are you ready kids?

Discipline #1. Sunday Gravy!

The way I put this all together last weekend was over the course of two days. It’s the best way to handle this much intensity in the kitchen so on Saturday I started making the sauce.

Once again to the way back machine. My second post ever has all that you need for the sauce basics and it’s variations but I did notice it is very skimpy on the photos so I’m going to walk you through it again.

The mother sauce has an onion, some garlic, mushrooms, a green bell pepper, a 28 oz can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes, another equal size can of diced San Marzanos, (2) 15 oz cans of tomato sauce, a splash of red wine, red pepper flake, salt and pepper, olive oil, fresh basil and fresh oregano.

Let’s do this fucker!

Saute the diced onion and peppers in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil until translucent, then add in your minced garlic, some salt and pepper, the red pepper flake, your basil and oregano, then add in the can of whole tomatoes that you’ve squished with your hands.

Saute this beauty on a low simmer for just about an hour. Stir every 5-7 minutes or so to ensure it doesn’t scorch. After one hour add in the can of diced tomatoes, one of the 15 oz cans of tomato sauce and the red wine. Give it a good stir and adjust seasonings as needed.

When the sauce is in this state you can let it simmer for as long as you would like while continuing to stir every several minutes. Since this is still the day before we cooked the rest of dinner I cooked it for about another 4 hours. After this cooking time, I let the sauce cool down, poured the sauce into a large plastic storage container and refrigerated overnight.

This is obviously a vegetarian sauce since I want my chicken to be the star protein of this meal. If you were doing the meat sauce you would have added the meat substances right after the onions and peppers sauteed.

I finished the sauce on Sunday but I’m not going to bounce you around chronologically since we’re doing three separate things here. Let’s just finish the sauce.

Next day, put the sauce back in the pan and reheat. Add in the 2nd 15 oz can of tomato sauce, some more fresh basil and oregano to “brighten” the sauce. Add in salt and pepper to taste. I cooked for an additional 3 hours.

One of my employees asked me why I cook the sauce as long as I do. It’s to turn up the intensity of the flavor. I prefer to let the whole tomatoes cook down, not completely because this is closer to a rustic sauce but I’ve found that every hour simmered brings another level of flavor to the party. Isn’t that what this shit is all about?

Fuck yes it is.

Finally we add in the mushrooms and let simmer for another 45 minutes to an hour.

There it is! Now if you wanted to just stick with this as your chosen Italian discipline you absolutely could. Serve this with some store bought noodles and make whatever else you want. This is the Mother Sauce after all. Read the linked recipe for the mother sauce and it’s variations. Are we stopping there?

Fuck no!

Discipline #2! Fresh pasta!

The lasagne recipe above walks you through making sheets of pasta from an all purpose flour dough but what we are doing today is making a semolina based dough. If this sounds familiar there’s a good reason for that.

We just did this a few weeks ago! Holy fucking hell yes. That’s the homemade fettucini and fresh pasta that started this whole fresh pasta craze I’m currently infatuated with. The pasta has gotten so fucking good that now I’m just making up various sauces to toss with my fresh pasta. That link goes through the entire pasta making operation and I’ll let it do the work for this section but I’ll still give a quick walk through.

It’s 1 1/2 cups of semolina flour, 2 beaten eggs, 2 tablespoons of water, two tablespoons of olive oil and some effort.

In complete seriousness this dough needs to be kneaded for a full 10 minutes. Set a timer. DO NOT give up before the 10 minutes are over because this is where the glutens do their magic and where the texture of the pasta comes from. If you short this step, you will have a tougher pasta.

Knead that bastard!

Roll into a ball and let the pasta rest for 30 minutes.

Then follow the linked instructions to roll, press and cut your pasta. When done you will let the pasta dry.

Let this dry for at least 15 minutes and you will have been rewarded with a stack-o-pasta that will do you some fucking justice!

Once again, could you just perfect discipline two? The fresh pasta? Damn fucking skippy you could. I’m going to be making some casio y pepe with some of this pasta for sure. I’ve also been reading about a browned butter and sage sauce that sounds incredible. There will probably be something carbonara based coming up as well. Hell, make your own pasta and use a store bou…. No fuck that. Make your own damn sauce. Fresh pasta is key to simple Italian pasta. That casio y pepe recipe has three fucking ingredients in it. You can do that.

Finally!

Discipline #3. Motherfucking chicken parm.

Look! Something I haven’t written about yet! And a real recipe! Woo! Not to mention this is the easiest of the 3 disciplines by far but that doesn’t mean it’s not tasty. This shit is wicked pissah good! The bees knees!

We’ve got to establish a rule before we start. The reason this shit is so tasty is because of this.

If that’s a little blurry here’s a stock photo from wikipedia.

This is real fucking deal imported Italian Parmigiano-reggiano cheese. Most grocery stores carry this stuff now. My store has a really rock solid cheese shop and they have two big ass wheels of this uncut and a third wheel where they cut the slices from. The top picture is the wedge I bought. It’s not cheap. That wedge cost me about 14 bucks but I still have a good portion of it in my refrigerator that I will use on lots of shit. Grate some of this over some scrambled eggs, grate it on a salad, grate it over anything that needs salt. Let the cheese be the salt.

Shit that sounded almost biblical.

Anyway use real cheese here. If you want to use some of the already grated but real parmesan –

I guess it would work but it won’t be as delicious.

Get some chicken breasts, how many is up to you based on the number of people you are feeding. I was cooking for three so I got 4 breasts that were sliced thin by the butcher. You can always use the flatten method and I will show you how.

2 beaten eggs.

1 cup of panko breadcrumbs. You can use the can of Italian breadcrumbs but I like the texture of panko.

Salt and pepper to taste

3 tablespoons of butter

1 tablespoon of olive oil

Fresh grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese.

Get yourself a skillet out and get it on a medium heat on the stove top.

Of the 4 thin sliced breasts I purchased, two of them were a little too thick so I used the wrap in plastic, put on a cutting board and whack the bejesus out of it method.

Next add the butter and olive oil into your heating skillet and it’s time to set up a dredging station.

That’s the chicken followed by the dish holding the beaten eggs. The third dish contains a mixture of the panko breadcrumbs and about 1 tablespoon of the fresh grated cheese mixed together. Fuck yes you can grate in more cheese if you want.

You should know the drill. Using ONE HAND ONLY take the chicken and place it into the egg dish coating all sides. Next dip the coated chicken into the panko mix and cover both sides with the breadcrumb mixture. Rub some extra on there too, we want this fucker coated.

Dredging is thirsty work.

Now gently place that chicken into your heated skillet and let’s do this thing.

Season the chicken with salt and pepper at this point. If you wanted to sprinkle some more breadcrumbs over this get after it! We’re going to cook these about 5 minutes per side. Let’s turn that bastard over now.

You only want to flip these over once so we don’t lose the breading. Little more salt and pepper on here next. Now? We’re going to turn this into chicken fucking parm! Grate some more of the fresh cheese over the cooked side of the chicken.

Cook for about 5 more minutes and get ready to plate. If you’re working in batches like I was, pre-heat your oven to 250 and place a baking pan inside. After cooking the chicken, drain quickly on paper towels and then place into the baking dish in the oven until all batches are finished.

You may be wondering if you could just eat this as a batch of tasty ass fried chicken.

HOLY FUCK YES YOU CAN!

This is discipline 3# remember? If you wanted to make this then slap it on a hoagie roll with some sauce and some fresh fucking mozzarella you would be treated as a conquering goddamn hero you would! Cook this and serve on a simple pasta along with a garden salad and you are living life right! Cook this and eat it with your bare fucking hands? I like the way you fucking roll homie!

Master any one of these disciplines and you will be doing yourself and those you serve real frontier justice. Master any two of these and serve together and you will have a line of people volunteering to stop in for dinner and bringing the wine.

Master all 3?

Let’s finish this!

That fresh pasta only needs 3 minutes to cook remember. Cook it now. Get a skillet out and grab a tongs-worth of the cooked pasta and put in the skillet, grab a ladle and add a big scoop of sauce right on top of the cooked pasta and stir to coat the pasta with the sauce. Remove from the pan and put on a plate. Oh yeah, back to the chicken real quick, while it was keeping warm in the oven I put a couple of slices of fresh mozzarella on top of each cooked chicken breast and let the cheese get melty. Take one of those cheesy pieces of chicken and place on top of your coated pasta and sauce. Add a bit more sauce so that it covers some of the chicken. Garnish with some fresh chopped parsley and some fresh basil and serve.

Here’s that photo again.

Enlarge that photo.

There it is. Our 8 plus hour sauce on top of our fresh pasta. Served right along side is our delicious chicken parmesan with some extra mozzarella on top. See the leaves of fresh basil on there? It really gives a nice freshness to the dish. Did we grate even more fresh parmigiano-reggiano over everything?

Class? You are correct.

I don’t even have to do a flavor summary here do I?

Yes, this was some work. Yes, it wasn’t exactly cheap to make. It was however one of the best dishes I’ve ever prepared and a goddamn delight for everyone involved.

Make one of the recipes. Make two of them and combine. Make all three and tell me what time dinner is and I will bring the wine.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to rest my fucking feet.

Much love folks.

Peace!