| Apr242010 | Ragu Bolognese |
I cooked up a ragu Bolognese last night for the 3rd time. Don’t let the name throw you off, that just means a meat sauce originating from Bologna, Italy. Here is my mise en place: white wine, chicken broth, canned tomato puree, chopped onions and garlic, diced celery and carrot, pancetta, butter and a pound of ground beef. Ingredients I forgot to photograph: olive oil, milk, cinnamon, chili flakes, salt, pepper.
The recipe comes from FXcuisine.com, the site perhaps makes it look incredibly hard and involved but it’s not actually so bad. Here are the basic steps:
- Dice everything.
- Get organized. (Seriously, this is the most important one.)
- Cook off vegetables, add pancetta and then put aside.
- Brown meat in batches, re-add vegetables, add wine.
- Transfer to a pot. Add milk, tomatoes and stock.
- Season and simmer for 4 hours.
Ok, so it’s not a beginner recipe but it’s fun for the more experienced home cook if you want to perhaps capture the romantic idea that you’re cooking in the traditional Italian way.
Celery, onions and carrot cooking together in delicious harmony. These are the delicious vegetables that form a base for many French and Italian dishes. It really pays to spend the extra time to get a good dice on these.
The meat has to be cooked in a hot pan in small batches. You want a good sear on it like a burger patty and you want bits to get stuck to the pan. Don’t worry about cooking it the whole way through, it’s going to simmer for 4 hours anyway.
Everything into a pot, together with the milk and tomatoes and stock. I didn’t really think this through so the simmer began at 9pm and lasted until 1am. Next time, start cooking earlier.
While waiting, it’s also a good time to throw together some homemade pasta noodles. Again, it’s something that sounds ridiculously hard like milling your own flour but it’s way easier than making cookies or baking a cake or even baking bread. You just need flour, eggs and olive oil. Knead it, rest it, roll it, eat it.
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