Fab Recipe for Ragu alla Bolognese

Colette’s Top Tips for August.....

Tomatoes - See our fab recipe for Ragù alla Bolognese below 

I have become rather nostalgic lately of summer in Italy, I think its everyone’s stories of their holidays and what they did that have me remembering the good times we had at this time of year. As most of the produce is local, that means seasonal so you either eat it or find ways of preserving it.

The most memorable is the making of tomato sauce. In Italy, each family buys around 400 kg of very ripe San Marzano tomatoes to make into sauce.

They arrive on a lorry and basically just poured out on the street, where you have a lifetimes worth of buckets where they get stored overnight. 6 am and you're outside washing them and the matriarch of the family, or my mother-in-law, has a wood fire going with a giant trivet and pot of water. The tomatoes then get boiled for around 2/3 minutes to slacken the skins, and then put into colanders. My job, or usually the youngest family member, was to prick each tomato about 3 times for the water to drain away. Can you tell that being a foreigner I wasn't allowed to anything more skilled! Then they go through a type of blender which separates the pulp, the skins and the seeds. The pulp is then bottled and sealed. Some at this time get left plain; others have herbs and seasonings added. By this time it’s about 5 pm and you're aching all over. They are then placed gingerly in a drum which is filled with water and placed over a fire until boiling. The bottles are left to cool overnight and then stored for the family’s enjoyment over the course of the year. It was such a long hard day, but the enjoyment of eating fresh tomato sauce in the midst of winter made it all worth while. The next best thing is the conversations about yield, bottles, how many bottles broke etc. Keeping up with the Jones in Gamberale is just so different

Here is a lovely recipe for a pasta sauce, using Passata. Don’t worry you’re allowed to cheat and buy the Passata (tomato sauce)  from the supermarket 

  

Ragù alla Bolognese 

Makes enough for 8

• 2kg minced beef,
• 5 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 carrots, finely chopped
• 1 celery stalk, finely chopped
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• sprig of rosemary and sprig of sage,
• 1 bottle of red wine
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste/puree
• 1 litre tomato passata
• salt and pepper
• crushed garlic 2 tea spoons

To serve: 

• pasta, preferably pappardelle, tagliatelle or short pasta
• freshly grated pecorino or parmesan cheese

Take the meat out of the fridge and lay it on a tray and let it come to room temperature, so that it will sear, rather than ‘boil’ when it goes into the pan.

Heat the oil in a wide-bottomed saucepan, add the vegetables, herbs and the crushed garlic , and sweat over a high heat for 5—8 minutes without allowing it to colour (you will need to keep stirring).

Season the meat with salt and pepper and add to the pan of vegetables, making sure that the meat is covering the base of the pan. Leave for about 5—6 minutes, so that the meat seals underneath and heats through completely, before you start stirring (otherwise it will ooze protein and liquid and it will ‘boil’ rather than sear). Take care, though, that the vegetables don’t burn — add a little more oil, if necessary, to stop this happening.

Stir the meat and vegetables every few minutes for about 10—12 minutes, until the meat starts to stick to the bottom of the pan. At this point, you should be ready to add the wine.

Add the wine and let it reduce right down to virtually nothing, then add the tomato paste and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring all the time.

Add the passata with 1 litre of water. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook for about 1-2 hours, adding a little extra water if necessary from time to time, until you have a thick sauce. Season to taste

When you are ready to serve the ragù, put it back into a pan and heat through. Cook your pasta (preferably pappardelle, tagliatelle or short pasta) and drain, reserving the cooking water. Add the pasta to the ragù and toss well, adding some of the cooking water, if necessary, to loosen the sauce. Serve with freshly grated Pecorino or Parmesan