A Hint of Mint

Welcome back to the occasional series, Sugo on Hugo. It's been at least a year since returning to the cozy, rainy-night basics of a sugo sauce ladeled over a toothsome pasta. The idea behind sugo is just minced meat. No veggies, no music, no veggies, no veggies, except for the onion and garlic chopped extremely fine. Tonight we chose lean ground beef, 5% fat, with the longer threads of the grind broken up with a wooden spoon as it was sauteeing. Don't give me no lumpy sugo, pal.

A large handful of red pepper flakes and a generous pinch of brown sugar later, it still needed something. Ah-ha: dried mint leaves, pulled from the stalks, ripped into small pieces but not pulverized. The more the better: I didn't really measure.

Fabulous. Beef and mint and dried red pepper, just what the doctor ordered as the hailstorms pinged the kitchen window and the thunder shook the fusilli.

King and Chief Probably Had a Big Beef

There's a running food fight between N.Y. Times food critic Frank Bruni and restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow, whose new Manhattan steakhouse, Kobe Club, Bruni skewered recently.

Chodorow responded with a $40,000 ad in the Times, forcing Bruni to actually go out and buy the paper instead of reading it online. (Hey, shouldn't he get a free subscription?)

Best quote from another star chef: "If Frank Bruni had poorly reviewed one of my restaurants, I might have pulled a Tonya Harding and broken his kneecaps. I’d have thought, Dude, I’ve gotta do something."

Did I just write "star chef"? I apologize. You may now slap me across the face with a raw turbot fillet 39-foot Colossal Squid.