I had never had this soup before in my life. I stumbled on it when I was doing one of my usual recipe searches where I type in a few ingredients I want to use and see what it spits back at me. In this case it was spinach and Italian sausage. I thought I would get only pasta dish suggestions, but I got this instead, and am so happy I did. I have made it three times in as many months now, enough to eat some now and more to freeze for later. It reheats surprisingly well for something with potatoes and cream in it. With a side of crusty bread and butter? YUM

• 4-5 slices bacon
• 1 pound mild or spicy Italian sausage, casings removed (I love Isernio’s Hot Italian)
• 1 small yellow or sweet onion, diced
• 3-4 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 cups ounces low-sodium chicken stock
• 3 medium russet potatoes, peeled and 1/4 inch dice
• 3 cups baby spinach (or kale, as you prefer)
• 3/4 cup heavy cream

DIRECTIONS

1. Cook bacon to desired doneness, slice into bite size pieces.
2. Cook sausage and onion in bacon grease until onion is translucent and sausage is no longer pink. Pour off any excessive fats.
3. Add garlic and cook until fragrant (1 min or so).
4. Add the chicken stock and potatoes, simmer for 12-15 minutes until potatoes are tender.
5. Add spinach and stir in, allowing to wilt down.
6. Add cream, bacon (save some back to garnish if you wish), stir together, season with salt and pepper to taste, serve with crusty bread.

I promise this won't be a long story. As briefly as possible:

My grandma made spaghetti we all loved. We kids begged for it to be the meal every time we came over. She joked she would only leave us the recipe in her will. She passed away, we have three slightly different versions of a recipe she hand-wrote, and literally none of them have ever tasted like her spaghetti when prepared as written.

After many attempts to doctor it up to try to make it taste right, no manner of tweaks helped. It just tasted like brown ground beef in tomato sauce (excuse me, the recipe called for "chop meat"!). The closest I ever got was when I took a big extra step and made the braciole, which she always made but I didn't eat as a kid, and have no recipe for. I tried several times making recipes for braciole FROM THE INTERWEBS, and the braciole was always delicious, and the sauce was the closest it ever came to tasting like hers. "Chop meat" and meatballs were always in her sauce. Was ground meat all that different back in her day, I wondered? It is still a question that lingers, but...

Skip ahead about 15 years and I find this recipe from Sam The Cooking Guy for an Instant Pot short rib ragu. I whipped it up and...my eyes nearly popped out of my head. THIS tasted like grandma's spaghetti sauce! Or at least as close as I have ever come, and pretty far from my last memory of actually eating it. I realized then and there the base sauce was pretty blah, it was in fact the seared beef (from the braciole, and in this case the ribs) that brought all the flavor. And while I love braciole, it is a Whole Process to make. So to figure out I can just use certain cuts of beef (*more on that in a second), and cook the hell out of it until it is tender and releases all the beefy flavor into the sauce...I'm in heaven.

Instant Pot means I don't have to cook it all day long. *And I discovered that I can use bone-in beef shank instead of short ribs to cut the cost 75%, and get MORE meat.
3 lbs Beef short ribs=$10/lb, a large part of that is bone = $30
2 lbs Bone-in beef shank=$5/lb, only one big center bone = $10

The shank still has some bone in there, and I am certain that some of that marrow getting into the sauce also contributes to flavor and mouthfeel. There is less fat on the shank that the ribs, but I find that to be a positive in this case. The flavor was not really changed, and I did way less skimming of the fat from the surface of the sauce at the end. I included the ingredients/instructions for both.

So without further ado:

INGREDIENTS

2 lbs beef shank or 3lbs pounds bone-in short ribs (if ribs, look for ones with lots of meat – I know this seems obvious, but if you don’t really scope them out, you'll wish you had more meat later)

Kosher & pepper

1 tablespoon oil

1/2 cup each diced carrot, celery, yellow onion

3 large cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup tomato paste

1/2- 3/4 cup red wine, (and I don’t care what any says, even a less expensive one will be perfect)

1 28 oz can chopped San Marzano style tomatoes

1 tablespoon beef stock paste, or a beef bouillon cube

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1 tablespoon dried oregano

Good pinch kosher salt & pepper

From Recipes From Italy

• 4 slices of smoked bacon of choice (mine was a cherrywood thick cut)
• 1 lb ground beef (we had 3/4lb of ground Wagyu, I would have liked more, so say 1 lb)
• 1 stalk celery
• 1 large carrot
• 1/2 a medium-large white onion
• 1 16oz can crushed tomatoes with basil
• 1/2 cup - 1 cup red wine
• Fresh thyme
• Olive oil
• pasta of choice

1. Have two pans at the ready--a deep sautee pan and a large sauce pan.
2. Cut the bacon into 1/4" chunks and put in sautee pan to start rendering yummy fats
3. Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in the large sauce pan over low heat. While it is heating, cut celery, carrot, and onion into big chunks and toss into a food processor (I have a little Ninja that works great for me) and fine chop. Add this to the olive oil in the pan and sweat the vegetables over a low heat until they release a fair amount of moisture.
4. While the veg sweats, back over in the sautee pan, add your ground beef and brown over medium heat. You want some crispy brown bits in there, so don't be afraid to bump the heat to get the Maillard reaction you want here.
5. Once beef is browned and veg has sweat it out, add veg to the sautee pan with the bacon and beef, stir to combine. Add in the can of tomatoes and the red wine (I briefly swish the wine around inside the tomato can to get the last of the juices outta there), stir to combine. 
6. Reduce over low heat as long as you can stand it. I only had 45 minutes to do it, since it was late at night and we needed to eat, but 2 hours is better. I add the fresh herbs about a half hour before the end of the cook, because personally I like it to retain some of its "greenness" in the flavor profile. If you don't care about such things, add it when you add the tomato sauce.
7. While sauce is reducing, add water to the sauce pan you used for the veg and cook your pasta. A good spaghetti noodle is good in a pinch, but a wider noodle is preferred if you have it.
8. Drain pasta and spoon a bunch of the bolognese in with the pasta and stir to let the pasta soak up and "finish" in the sauce.
9. Tong a nest of pasta into a bowl, top with sauce. Add grated parmesan cheese on top if you like (this is blasphemy to some Italian chefs, but hell...we're Americans and we like our cheese).

Cheese Stuffed Meatloaf

• 1/2 lb ground beef
• 1 pkg (12oz/4ea) Isernios Hot Italian Sausages, removed from casings
• 1 stalk celery, fine chop
• 1 large carrot, fine chop
• 1/2 cup Italian panko breadcrumbs
• extra rosemary as desired
• 1 egg
• sat & pepper
• 4 sticks string cheese, um...out of the packaging. :)
• 3 Tbsp ketchup
• 2 Tbsp dijon mustard

1. Heat oven to 350.
2. Line a loaf pan with foil, leaving edges up like a sling
3. Mix all ingredients, save for the string cheese, with your hands, combining ingredients well.
4. Take about 3/4 of the meat mixture and form a sort of "tray" in the bottom of the loaf pan about 1-1.5" thick with slightly raised sides.
5. Lay mozzarella sticks out in this trough, tuck the rest of the meat mixture on top of and around the mozzarella sticks.
6. Bake uncovered in oven for 1-1 1/2 hours
7. Mix together ketchup and dijon to make a simple glaze (alternately, try a splash of some leftover favorite spaghetti sauce)
8. Brush top of meatloaf with this sauce and broil until starting to bubble and brown
9. Remove from oven, lift meatloaf out with sling and place on cutting board to rest for 3-5 minutes
10. Slice and carefully transfer to plates.

• Pre-heat oven to 375F
• Foil a baking pan or sheet, spray foil with cooking spray
• Combine cheese, bread crumbs, oregano, salt and pepper in a shallow bowl
• Crack egg into separate bowl and whisk lightly
• Pat chicken dry, dip in egg then in cheese/bread crumbs mixture coating all sides
• Place chicken on prepared baking sheet and put in oven, set timer for 10 minutes
• When timer goes off, start a pot of water boiling; Re-set timer for 15 minutes
• When water comes to boil, drop in pasta and cook 7-9 minutes
• Drain pasta and return to hot pot. Immediately drop in pat of butter and stir to coat pasta. Add dash of cream (I used about a Tablespoon) and stir. Finally, add 2 Tbsp of pesto or as much as desired to coat your pasta
• Your timer for the chicken should be going off about now, so pull it outta there
• Place a nest of pesto pasta in the center of the plate, lay chicken breast on top. Grate a little more asiago on top, maybe a sprig of parsley if you're feeling festive

1. Start water boiling, salt, add pasta when it begins to roil. Cook al dente while continuing with below steps. 
2. Heat olive oil in large pan over medium heat 
3. Add sausage to pan and cook until no longer pink ~8 minutes. 
4. Add onions and garlic and cook until onions are translucent ~6-8 minutes. 
5. Using an immersion blender or Magic Bullet type device, put tomatoes and red pepper flakes into cream and blend until tomatoes are blended to your liking. Careful not to over-blend and turn cream into butter, but a thickening of the cream during this step is a bonus, IMO as it shortens reduction time in the pan.
6. Pour cream into pan with sausage/onion/garlic; add Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper to taste; heat through. If you feel the cream needs more reduction, give it a few minutes on a low simmer to thicken.
7. Drain pasta, put pasta in pan with sausage and sauce and toss to coat.
8. Divide between two pasta bowls, garnish with tomato and/or a pinch of parsley, and enjoy!