Giada De Laurentiis - Short Ribs with Tagliatelle

Start by cooking pancetta until crisp. Remove pancetta but leave the rendered fat in the pan.

Season short ribs with salt and pepper, then dredge with flour (white circle) Dice an onion(gray) and carrot (orange) that is also parsley in the picture (green)

Place the short ribs into the hot pan with the panchetta fat and brown on each side. How did I get so wet? We don't have a pong table in our apartment but that is a total pongstain

She Puts the onion, garlic, and carrot into the processor, but we just diced them up real small so they wouldn't become liquid in our blender. We DID however blend the tomatoes, tomato paste and parsley. My blender is glistening.

Add the Ribs to the pot.

Carrots, onion and garlic

Tomato Parsley mix

Panchetta

Fresh rosemary

Oregano

Thyme

The ever present bay leaf

Red wine and beef stock (not pictured)

Bring it up to a simmer covered for 1 hour and 15 minutes. - Then uncovered for another hour and a half

This is when we made the pasta. Take 3 cups of flour (plus more for bench flour) and 4 eggs. Some salt and olive oil. Do like Mandi is doing - make a well of flour and add the eggs in the middle. Then just knead for awhile. This will annoy you the first 2 times you make it, but after that it becomes easy. Also the taste is so much better you kind of get addicted to making it. I still love dried pasta but on a Sunday afternoon nothing beats making a meal like this.

The pasta needs to rest for about a half hour. This is when I make Mandi a delicious basil orange mojito. Is that flour on the straw? On the right is Giada's book, ready to be referenced. Whats with the large number of full and empty glasses on the table?

Hmm how can we kill a half hour? Watch 30 rock!

Ok, back to pasta making.

If there is enough flour and the pasta is folded right, you can just make a few slices and unfold it and have perfect tagliatelle.

Fish out the ribs and bring to a cutting board. Take 2 forks and shred the beef. Don't be too rough or you will end up with pieces of gristle in the sauce.

The blur in this shot reminds me of my own vision at this time, blurred by the sight of amazingness laid before me. Or my extreme hunger.

Put the shredded ribs back into the pot

Cook the pasta for only about 2 minutes, then put it into a warm bowl with the sauce and let it finish cooking for another minute or 2.

So awesome

Chocolate? Yep!

If you cook this meal, you need to have a great Italian movie to watch with it. If you watch this movie, you need to have a great Italian meal to go with it. We had both. Its called Big Night and you should watch it.