Bolognese sauce with homemade pasta

Beef Bolognese sauce with homemade pasta

      I have been dreaming of making Bolognese sauce ever since I first read about it in by go-to cookbook, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.  It sounded amazing, but for some reason I never got around to cooking it.  Years later, I bought an Italian cookbook called The Essentials of Classic Italian Cuisine by Marcella Hazan, highly recommended by a fellow-foody and friend of mine, Rachel Harker.  Alas, this book also sat for months and months (are you sensing a theme here?), until the cold weather, full weekend and a desire to use my Le Creuset dutch oven again finally motivated me enough to go out and just do it!  The results were well worth the wait!

The finished Bolognese sauce.  Meaty, rich and delicious!

My homemade tagliatelle pasta was the perfect accompaniment for the sauce.

Bolognese meat sauce from The Essentials of Classic Italian cooking by Marcella Hazan

Notes:

Ragu, as the Bolognese call their celebrated meat sauce, is characterized by mellow, gentle, comfortable flavor that any cook can achieve by being careful about a few basic points:

• The meat should not be from too lean a cut; the more marbled it is, the sweeter the ragu will be.  The most desirable cut of beef is the neck portion of the chuck.
• Add salt immediately when sauteing the meat to extract its juices for the subsequent benefit of the sauce.
• Cook the meat in milk before adding wine and tomatoes to protect it from the acidic bite of the latter.
• Do not use a demiglace or other concentrates that tip the balance of flavors toward harshness.
• Use a pot that retains heat.  Earthenware is preferred in Bologna and by most cooks in Emilia-Romagna, but enameled cast-iron pans or a pot whose heavy bottom is composed of layers of steel alloys are fully satisfactory.
• Cook, uncovered, at the merest simmer for a long, long time; no less than 3 hours in necessary, more is better

Makes: 

2 heaping cups. for about 6 servings and 1 1/2 pounds pasta

Ingredients:

1 tbsp. vegetable oil

3 tbsp. butter plus 1 tbsp. for tossing the pasta

1/2 cup chopped onion

2/3 cup chopped celery

2/3 cup chopped carrot

3/4 lb. ground beef chuck (see prefatory note above)

salt

black pepper, ground fresh from the mill

1 cup whole milk

Whole nutmeg

1 cup dry white wine

1 1/2 cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice

1 1/4 to 1 1/2 pounds pasta

Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese at the table

Recommended Pasta:

There is no more perfect union in all gastronomy than the marriage of Bolognese ragu with homemade Bolognese tagliatelle.  Equally classic is Baked Green Lasgane with Meat Sauce, Bolognese Style.  Ragu is delicious with tortellini and irreproachable with such boxed dry pasta as rigatoni, conchiglie or fusilli.  Curiously, considering the popularity of the dish in the United Kingdom and the countries of the Commonwealth, meat sauce in Bologna is never served over spaghetti.

Procedure:

1) Put the oil, butter, and chopped onion in the pot, and turn the heat on to medium.  Cook and stir the onion until it has become translucent, then add the chopped celery and carrot.  Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring the vegetable to coat them well.

2) Add the ground beef, a large pinch of salt, and a few grinding of pepper.l  Crumble the meat with a fork, stir well, and cook until the beef has lots its raw, red color.

3) Add the milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely.  Add a tiny grating,- about 1/8 teaspoon- of nutmeg, and stir.

4) Add the wine, let it summer until it has evaporated, then add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all ingredients well.  When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through to the surface.  Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time.  While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that it begins to dry and the fat separates from the meat.  To keep it from sticking, continue the cooking, adding 1/2 cup of water whenever necessary.  At the end, however, no water at all must be left an the fat must separate from the the sauce.  Taste and correct for salt.

5) Add the cooked drained pasta, adding the tablespoon of butter, and serve with freshly ground Parmesan on the side.

  The results?  Amazing and time-consuming!  This sauce takes an amazingly long time!  I started cooking at 11:30 a.m. and didn't have dinner until 6:45 p.m.  The sauce was cooking that whole time!  In addition to the pasta needing to simmer for three hours, it takes hours for all of the milk and all of the wine to cook off.  Also, once I added in the tomatoes, I couldn't quite get it at the perfect lazy simmer (the sauce would  wither bubble too violently or the flame would go out), but I did the best I could and it turned out great!  Considering, that the author said that there is no more perfect union in all gastronomy than the marriage of Bolognese ragu with homemade Bolognese tagliatelle, I knew I had to make fresh pasta to perfectly accompany this dish.  See my previous post about making ravioli for the fresh pasta at http://insearchoftheperfectmacaroniandcheese.blogspot.com/2011/02/fresh-pasta-aka-homemade-ravioli.html.  Only thing that changes is that instead of making ravioli, you simply roll the flattened pasta dough on itself and cut it into 1/4 inch strips to make extra-wide noodles.  This is most very definitely worth the extra effort; the pasta was cooked to perfection and matched beautifully with the sauce.  The sauce was rich, meaty, complex and absolutely amazing.  I served it with salad, bread and butter from the Parma region of Italy (I highly recommmend buying this butter if you ever find it; it is like eating sunshine on a field).  I will definitely be making this recipe again, especially for special celebrations!  I hope that you enjoy!