A Bolognese Sauce to Appease the Grandmother Within
January 31, 2012 by
I come from stirring stock. That is to say, my people are stirrers. It’s how my grandmother, avó Costa, cooked. She stood facing the stove for hours in her pink housecoat and pink slippers, her tiny pink hand planted on her hip, singing in her thin, reedy voice. She stirred all kind of Portuguese comestibles: spicy stuffing with chunks of homemade chouriço sausage; her famous pink (of course) chicken, rice, and potato soup; and vats and vats of kale soup.
When she grew too old to stir her soups and stews for long, I’d do it for her. By then age had stolen a few inches from her, but she still managed to peer over the tops of the pots and instruct, “Mais devagar, queirdo, mais devagar.” Slower, sweetheart, slower.
I think it’s genetic. When the temperature nosedives, all I want to do is hover over a simmering pot and stir. And what I’ve been craving lately is a long-simmered, deeply flavored Bolognese sauce recipe. The kind that takes no prisoners. The kind that makes your guests plead for the secret. (Are you reading this, Kate Jackson?) The kind that leaves you on the couch unable to move because you didn’t have enough sense to stop after your second helping of seconds.
I’m certain if vovó had discovered ragù Bolognese in her lifetime, she would’ve petitioned the Pope to make us Italian. It’s her kind of dish.
So my hunt was on for a Portuguese-grandmother-approved Bolognese sauce–rich, meaty, slow-cooked, constantly stirred–to quench that nagging craving. This narrowed the field exponentially. Anything from a 30-minute-meal proselytizer was clearly out of contention, as were recipes from ADD TV chefs and hosts. I found–and promptly rejected–a recipe in Cook’s Illustrated that got the job done in a two hours. (Two hours? I can’t find my way out of our pantry in two hours.) Then, while sitting in front of my cookbook collection, I was reminded of another short, sturdy woman who also comes from stirring stock: L’Imperatrice–The Empress–Marcella Hazan.
I immediately downloaded The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. (Why I didn’t already have a copy is a question for another day.) Flipping through the book revealed a woman who spoke her mind, knew right from wrong, and, if you disagreed with what she had to say, well, that was your problem. (Not unlike Momma Leite, if you ask me.) I knew The Empress wouldn’t let me down. And she didn’t. Her Bolognese sauce clocks in at a whopping six hours. That’s longer than some relationship I’ve seen.
As I leaned against the stove with my iPad in its kitchen condom, a gorgeous sauce burbling down to sweet goodness in the pot, I was connecting to my past–to my stirrers. And to a craving even deeper, to be with my avó just one more time.
Ragù Bolognese to Appease the Grandmother Within
Marcella, in her inimitable fashion, offers the home cook plenty of suggestions to create an authentic Bolognese sauce recipe, the kind my grandmother would approve of. First, the more marbled the meat, the sweeter the ragù. The most desirable cut of beef is the neck portion of the chuck. You may have to call up and order it from your butcher. It’s also important to salt the meat as soon as it hits the pan; it extracts the juices and flavors the sauce. Last, use a heavy pot that retains heat. (I use my Le Creuset 5-quart Dutch oven.) Avoid a cast-iron pot, as the acid can interact with the metal and turn the sauce an unpleasant blech color.–David Leite
LC Time is Not of the Essence Note: Rush this recipe, and you’ll miss its most important ingredient. Time. Time to ponder. Time to make lists. Time to sing the entire soundtrack of “Evita.”
Special Equipment: Patience
Active time: 20 minutes | Total time: 6 hours, most of it unattended, except for making lazy eights with a wooden spoon
Bolognese Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
| metric conversion- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
- 1 cup chopped onion
- 1 1/3 cups chopped celery
- 1 1/3 cups cup chopped carrot
- 1 1/2 pounds ground beef chuck, ground pork, and ground veal (1/2 pound of each)
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 2 cups whole milk
- 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, or ground if you’re bereft of fresh
- 2 cups dry white wine
- 3 cups reduced homemade tomato purée or canned imported Italian San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand, with their juice
- As much spaghetti as you wish, cooked and drained
- Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, at the table
Directions
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- 1. Heat the oil and 6 tablespoons of the butter in a heavy 5-quart over medium heat until the butter melts and stops foaming. Drop in the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until it has become translucent, about 5 minutes.
- 2. Dump in the celery and carrot and cook for 2 minutes, stirring the vegetables to coat them well with the fat.
- 3. Add the ground meats, a very healthy pinch of salt, and a goodly amount of pepper. Crumble the meat with a wooden spoon, and stir well the meats have lost their raw, red color.
- 4. Turn the heat to low. Pour in the milk and simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has burbled away completely, about 1 hour. Stir in the nutmeg.
- 5. Pour in the wine and let it simmer, stirring frequently, until it has evaporated, about 1 1/4 hours.
- 6. Add the tomato purée or crushed tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat everything well. When the tomato puree begins to bubble, turn down the heat so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through the surface.
- 7. Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. While the sauce is burbling away, there’s a chance that it’ll stat drying out somewhat, and the fat will separate from the meat.To keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pot and scorching, add 1/2 cup water as necessary. But it’s crucial that by the time the sauce has finished simmering, the water should be completely evaporated, and the fat should separate from the sauce. Take a spoonful–or two. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- 8. Add remaining 2 tablespoons of butter to the hot pasta and toss with the sauce. Serve with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on the side.
Hungry for more? Chow down on these:
- Mushroom Bolognese Sauce from The Italian Dish
- Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce from The Pioneer Woman
- Rigatoni with Sweet Tomatoes, Eggplant, and Mozzarella from Leite's Culinaria
- Spaghetti with Red Wine and Pecorino from Leite's Culinaria
Zen and the Art of Cooking for The One
January 13, 2012 by
I was abandoned on New Year’s Day by The One.
Yes, I was left to kick off 2012 by my lonesome. Just me and the kids. He was on his way to a five-day respite at Kripalu, a center for yoga and health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Far be it from me to stop him from twisting himself into a human pretzel every morning at 6:30 and eating Tofu Surprise three times a day. We each have our own path to enlightenment. Mine just happens to be slicked with butter and duck fat.
His hope was to get centered, cleanse both body and mind, and sort through some things that have been weighing on him. Being the immensely insecure–and let’s just say it: self-centered–person that I am, I immediately thought it was all about me. So at the front door, I flipped up his collar, tugged him close to me, and warned, Don Corleone-style, “Don’t talk to anyone thinner, richer, or cuter than me.” He simply smiled, long ago inured to my threats, protestations, and tantrums. ”I mean it!” I added.
And I did. This idea of giving someone you love so much undisturbed time to think can be dangerous. Thinking turns into analyzing. Analyzing turns into realizing. Realizing turns into acting. Acting turns into divorce. Or something like that. Read more »
What I Learned in 2011
December 28, 2011 by
I don’t bother making New Year’s resolutions anymore. What’s the sense of setting myself up for failure when January is but a few hours old? Guaranteed, two weeks into the new year I’ll feel like a loser. Instead I try to quiet my mind (a hard thing to do, what with all this ADD rattling around inside) and contemplate what I learned in the dearly departed year. From that furrowed-brow cogitation I cobble together a list of personal goals. Which, as I write this, probably sounds a lot like resolutions. But to me, resolutions feel rigid. Like my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Firs, slapping her ruler–thwack, thwack, thwack–in time to some internal clock, just waiting to whap one of us in the back of the head for misbehaving. A goal is all shiny and bright–a bauble of hope. It doesn’t have the word not in it, as in, “I will not overeat” and “I will not curse like a sailor on shore leave” and “I will not look at some twentysomething with his whole life ahead of him and who already knows as much as I do at more than twice his age and find fault with his fashion choices.” Uh, not that any of these have ever applied to me.
This year, more than ever, a great many of the lessons I learned came from fellow bloggers. As a nod of gratitude to them, and as a way of getting my dolls and dishes packed up for next year, I thought I’d share some of the more inspiring lessons. Read more »
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