Orecchiette Bolognese with Chestnuts

This recipe is from the famous Chef Daniel Boulud. There were 2 versions of the recipe; one is the Chef's way and one is the easy way. I took the easy way. I haven't made this in a long time so I thought I would resurrect the recipe to see if I still found it to be delicious. For this experiment, I invited my 2 meat loving friends and my son who happened to be home.

The ingredients called for 1-1/2 lbs. of thickly sliced smoked ham, 2lbs of ground beef chuck, celery, carrots, onion, garlic, sage, rosemary, parsley, chicken stock, at least 6 oz. of vacuum packed chestnuts, crushed red pepper and heavy cream towards the end of cooking. I simmered the sauce longer than what the recipe called for and added more red pepper. I made the sauce the day before I planned to serve the dinner and added the cream, chestnuts and parsley on the day of the dinner.

I served a green salad with olive oil and fig balsamic vinaigrette and French bread to go with the bolognese. Everyone loved it and if I may say myself, I did too. It was so good. The only thing I would change next time is the pasta. The orecchiette tended to stick together. I think spaghetti or linguine would be a better choice of pasta next time.

Dessert was a store bought S'mores Pie from Bristol Farms. Again, everyone loved it. Three days have passed since I had this dinner and so far, no one complained about getting sick so I guess the dinner was a success.