Lunch
To both get out of the house for a while, and to have a little food adventure, we drove to downtown Los Angeles to Bronzed Aussie for an Australian meat pie and sausage roll.
While a lamb pie is not highly tradition this one, with Minced lamb braised in Madeira sauce, potatoes, carrots & peas, flavored with rosemary & garlic was particularly tasty for $10.90 or $11.81 with tax.
We paired it with a homemade seasoned pork sausage rolled in very good puff pastry for $4.90 with tax.
While not a cheap lunch at $16.71 per serve, they were excellent examples of their kind, and both pie and sausage roll had better pastry and more flavorsome interiors than any pie or sausage roll we could find in Australia last December.
Dinner
Before we went out for lunch, Greg started the bolognese sauce, which ultimately simmered for about six hours. We served with simple penne and shaved parmesan cheese for a simple, but fully flavored, dish.
The sauce makes six good servings.
With a dish like this the secret is to get great tomatoes and found low sodium Italian tomatoes at Trader Joe’s that bought real tomato flavor. The ground beef is from dry aged primals via our Prather Ranch meat delivery.
- The ground beef was $17.12 for two pounds, or $2.85 per serve
- We used half a pint of half & half, or 13c per serve
- One cup of red wine adds15c per serve
- Onion, celery and garlic add 22c per serve
- Tomato paste comes in a 90c can, but we used 1/8 or 3c per serve
- Two large cans of San Marzano tomatoes were $7.98 or $1.33 per serve
- Seasonings add 34c per serve
- Brown rice penne was $1.99 or 67c between the three servings for this meal
- Shaved parmesan comes in a $5.49 pack, and we used 1/4 or 46c per serve.
Tonight was an excellent example of a simple, but fully flavored bolognese sauce over penne with shaved parmesan for $6.18.
It also marked the first night where the new ‘North Terrace’ was fully operational and ready for our first guest.