Maybe the most ¨raped¨ Italian dish
ingredienti per 4 porzioni (costo circa 5 € ap)
- Sale
- 500 g fresh tagliatelle or pappardelle with eggs
- 200 g minced beef shoulder
- 200 g minced pork shoulder
- 100 g pancetta
- 300 ml vegetable stock
- 80 ml red wine
- half can with whole tomatoes
- 1 cipolla media
- 1 carota media
- 1 medium celery stick
- 60 g di burro
- 60 g parmigiano reggiano
- Pepe nero macinato grosso
– Hey captain, my captain ………
– What is going on?
– I want you to fire the ship´s cook.
– What for? Have you find anything strange in your food?
– No, something worse, he has prepared an awful pasta and calls it Bolognese sauce. If you don´t fire him, I am gonna call the cops, I have a friend in Bologna police, Coliandro is his name.
That imaginary dialogue could be true. I don´t know why, but in the whole fucking world every (non Italian) cook who prepares pasta with meat calls it Bolognese, something that provokes the slander of the beautiful Italian city.
NO, Bolognese pasta is a ragù (this is the right word for meat and pasta dishes) made with minced meat, soffritto Italiano and served with fresh egg pasta. I show you how, right know.
First, we cut in very small, tiny dice the onion, the carrot, the celery and the pancetta. We start cooking them with butter in very gentle heat as we want them to soften completely. I suggest you to cook each aromatic vegetable separated in order to preserve its original colour and to stop the cooking procedure the exact point which every aromatic has but it is not obligatory. When all vegetables are well cooked, we salt them lightly and we add the minced meat. We brown it very gently.
We deglaze with the red wine bringing it to a boil to evaporate the excess alcohol. We add the tomato, cut in very small pieces and some stock and we check the salt. We then reduce the heat to minimum and we let the sauce simmer for 2,5-3 hours, maybe more, depending on the exact temperature, which in any case must be very low. If the sauce tends to dry we add a ladle of hot stock. We check the salt and we add some pepper.
What we need to keep in mind is that we want the meat to be very very tender, almost melted in the sauce which must be very dense but moist. We also have to remember that the lid of the pot must be half closed and not hermetically sealed in order to limit the temperature to “friendly” levels. It is important for this preparation not to hurry, a low temperature secures an excellent ragù. When the ragù is ready, we beat it with the wooden ladle to “break” the meat pieces, in order to make them smaller and help them “stick” on the pasta surface.
Meanwhile, we prepare our fresh pasta as we have already learnt qui.
Ιn a big pot we bring to boil salted water. When ready, we cook our pasta (tagliatelle or papardelle, the only difference is the pasta width) for about 2 minutes.
We strain them and we carry them in a big pan with the sauce and the half amount of parmigiano cheese and we start to mantecare, which means continuously stirring the pasta and adding a ladle or two of boiling water, till we create a creamy result.
We put in plates, we add the rest of the parmigiano cheese and we serve.
