Turkey Neck Sugo

One of the great pleausres of visiting our friends Tina and David is that Tina and I get to cook together. We always have a lot of fun--sipping wine, chatting about the state of the world and our smaller worlds and we get to make something that tastes great into the bargain. On this visit we concentrated on trying recipes from the most recent volume of Canal House Cooking: The Good Life. I wanted to try this recipe for a sauce made from turkey necks. So, we did. It has wonderful flavor and you can use it on any number of pastas or as they suggest and we did, on gnocchi. The original recipe doesn't add the meat back into the sauce, but when we finished cooking the meat it still had a lot of flavor left. So, I decided to shred the meat and add it back into the sauce, making it more like a ragu. However you decide to cook this, you can't go wrong.

TURKEY NECK SUGO

(makes 3-4 cups)

1. 5 pounds turkey necks
2. Salt and Pepper
3. 1/4 cup olive oil
4. 2 yellow onions, finely chopped
5. 1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
6. 1/4 whole nutmeg, grated
7. Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
8. 2 bay leaves
9. 1 cup whole milk
10. 1 cup white wine
11. 1 can Italian San Marzano plum tomatoes, 28-ounce

Season the turney necks with salt and pepper. Heat the olve oil in a large, heavy ovenproof pot with a lid over medium-high heat. Put the necks in the pot and brown on all sides, about 20 minutes.

Remove the necks from the pot and set them aside.

Reduce heat to medium. Put the onions and carrots into the pot and cook until softened, about 15 minutes. Stir in the nutmeg, red pepper flakes and bay leaves and season with salt and pepper. Cook for about a minute.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Increase heat under the pan to high and add the milk to the pot.Cook, stirring occasionally until the milk has reduced and been absorbed by the onions and carrots, 5-10 minutes. Add the wine and cook until it has also reduced and been absorbed by the vegetables, 5-10 minutes.

Return the necks to the pot, add the tomatoes, crushing them with your hand and  add 4 cups of water. Cover the pot and cook in the oven for about 3 hours. Remove the pot from the oven. Remove and discard the necks from the sauce. If the sauce needs further reduction, coo over medum heat, stirring from time to time with a wooden spoon, until it is the consistency that you like. Serve with gnocchi and sprinkle with parmigianao-regianno.