Pasta Bolognese – Two Versions

Where to begin. There is no dish I have prepared more, no dish that I prepared earlier in my life that I still prepare. And there is likely no other dish that provides me as much satisfaction or comfort, although not in a Proustian way. This sauce bears little resemblance to the version my father made – his was slightly thinner, and involved bay leaves, red wine, and green peppers – but I do remember him laboring over it, tasting it, tweaking it. His was a version of his mother’s, and it was as personal a thing and as great a source of satisfaction, perhaps, for him as it is for me.

There are some things that I love so dearly I will not tolerate adulterated versions: a fresh truffle, for instance, makes a mockery out of the experience of eating a canned one, and I won’t do the latter. There are other things that I love so much – surely a different kind of love – that I will accept and find redemption in virtually any version. Mac and cheese is one of these things – it is appalling how lowly a version I am content to eat – and Pasta Bolognese is another. Yes, a bad bolognese is a disappointment, but I secretly prefer it to good or even great versions of many other things. I’m not a huge fan of Ethiopian food, I must admit, and while traveling there extensively I discovered that one of the culinary vestiges of the Italian presence is that a (usually spaghetti) Bolognese is on virtually every menu – and even in the places that have no menus, it is known to the chef. I carved a swath of Bolognese ordering across that country, and delighted in its varied character from place to place, cook to cook. In many places, the dish I was served would surely make the Consorzio di Parma shudder, but from what I hear, if you’re a friend of ours, those guys will happily stamp virtually anything you want with the Parma Crown so who’s to say what’s authentic and what’s not? I experienced such a variety of seasonings, heat, meat, tomato, and cooking time – the only real thing that united these dishes were the canned tomato base, some sort of minced or ground meat, and the fact that it was served on top of pasta. And I felt fortunate to be eating every one of them.

What is a Bolognese sauce? Is it a tomato sauce with meat? For my purposes, yes, and that’s certainly how I’ll use it throughout this collection, but purists might note that traditionally, a Bolognese sauce is meat simmered in milk and wine, with the addition of some tomatoes. Hardly a tomato sauce. The texture and richness committees can tally their votes after a blind taste test, but both are delicious, simple, and worth knowing how to do, so I have included both recipes. I made the first one almost exclusively up until about two years ago, and I don’t think I’ve made it since, unless in a serious pinch for time or ingredients.

I think I have probably experimented with literally every ingredient in these recipes, bringing it through every imaginable permutation of size, shape, variety, or species. So believe me when I say that everything below has been rigorously interrogated, even if its place seemed guaranteed from the start. There are so many little variations that I may add on any given night, depending on mood or what’s available; I have included some of the better ones below.

There are some things that I think make my version of this particularly successful. First off, I use a lot of olive oil to start with. I’ll scale back if I’ve got particularly fatty meat. I use ground or pureed tomatoes. I add cheese to the sauce, and usually finish it with butter. I sear the meat first, to give it a nice crust, rather than sautéing the onions and garlic first. I add some red pepper flakes, but not so much that you’d know. I like to add both dried and fresh basil. In general, I love this technique, since you’re highlighting two ends of the flavor spectrum of one ingredient within a dish. The dried herb incorporates into the sauce, giving it its broad, subtle, muted character, while the fresh herb acts as sharp, intense accents of the same concentrated flavor. Great technique, and many thanks to Mario Batali for communicating that idea. Now let us never speak of him again. Finally, I find that a Bolognese will accompany almost any pasta well. The thicker and more robust, generally, the better, but it can go with short or long quite well. With each different shape, a good Bolognese possesses its own unique pleasure, whether conchiglie, rigatoni, mezzi rigatoni, papardelle, paccheri, cavatelli, strozzapreti, garganelli, spaghetti, casarecce, pici, gemelli, Barzini, Tataglia, Stracci, Cuneo, and tagliatelli (to many, the most appropriate choice). The first version of Bolognese is a bit more saucy and will do slightly better with the longer pastas, whereas version # 2 is more like clumps of ground meat simmered in a tomato-wine-milk broth.

Recipe 1: Pasta Bolognese

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• Dash of white wine or vermouth
• 1 28-oz can of ground or pureed tomatoes
• 1 TBS dried basil
• 1 tsp each dried oregano, thyme, and red pepper flakes
• 12 leaves fresh basil
• 4 oz parmigiano reggiano
• Salt and pepper
• 2 oz butter (optional)
• 4 oz chicken stock (optional)
• 1 box of pasta

Directions:

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet until very hot. Add the meat, breaking up with your fingers as you drop it in the pan. Salt it generously and pepper it as well. Let it sit for about 20-30 seconds, until a dark brown sear has formed on the bottom. Break it up vigorously with a spatula or spoon, stirring until it is fully cooked through. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is soft, about 8 minutes. The onion should not begin to brown significantly.

Deglaze with the white wine. When the alcohol has evaporated, add the tomatoes. Rinse the sides of the can or box that the tomatoes came in with as little water as necessary to capture all that is sticking to the sides; add to the sauce. Add the herbs and red pepper flakes, another dash of salt and pepper, stir to combine thoroughly. Reduce heat to medium or medium low and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure that the bottom does not scorch.

If the sauce begins to dry at any point, you may add water, pasta cooking water, or chicken stock. After 30 minutes, the raw taste of the tomatoes should be gone and the flavors should be thoroughly combined. The sauce is more or less ready at this point, but I recommend cooking it for another 15 minutes minimum, or up to one hour. Put a large pot of water on to boil, salt it when ready, add the pasta.

While the pasta is cooking, add the cheese and butter, if desired, to the sauce. Prevent the sauce from getting too dry by adjusting the heat and adding liquid in small amounts when necessary. Just before the pasta is done, tear up the basil into small pieces or make a chiffonade. Add to the sauce and turn off the heat; add the drained pasta and toss to thoroughly combine.

Serve, of course, with mounds of cheese.

Variations:

• add two slices of bacon or the equivalent in pancetta, cut into cubes or strips, to the meat at the outset. If you have very smoky bacon, it is sometimes nice to mince it very fine so it disappears into the sauce but lends an unmistakable flavor.
• add 4 oz of chicken liver at the outset. Mince this very fine, so there is no hint that it ever existed – it will simply add a rich, overall meatiness to the sauce.
• Use an even mixture of ground pork, veal, and beef, instead of beef. This adds a level of complexity and richness to the meat, and is an excellent variation (see also recipe 2, below).
• Add cremini musrooms, quartered, or porcini mushrooms, rough chopped, when you add the onions and garlic.
• Add two carrots, grated fine with a cheese grater, to the sauce when you add the onions. The carrots will disappear into the sauce, but will balance the acid of the tomatoes with some sugar and depth.

Recipe 2: Ragù Bolognese

This is my version of a more traditional preparation for a Bolognese sauce. Tomatoes are not the main ingredient here – this is more like a slow simmered collection of ground meats. Because of this, it is a little clumpier than the sauce above, and I recommend you use it for short pasta that will catch little bundles of meat in its nooks and crannies.

You may substitute the ground pork with sweet sausage meat, but be aware that this does tend to be a fatty substitute and if it has already been packed into sausage shapes, will take a little extra effort to distribute evenly. And if you’re against eating veal, as I increasingly am these days in every-day circumstances, just use a full pound of beef instead.

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup olive oil
• ¼ pound pancetta, ground or minced very fine
• ½ pound each ground beef, veal, and pork
• 1 cup white wine
• 2 cups milk
• 8 oz tomato paste
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 medium carrot, peeled and grated fine
• 2 large cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 TBSP dried basil
• 1 tsp each dried oregano, thyme, and red pepper flakes
• Small bunch of fresh basil
• Salt and pepper
• 2 TBSP butter
• 2 TBSP parmiggiano reggiano cheese, grated fine

Directions:

Add the oil to a very large skillet and place over high heat. When the oil is hot, add the four ground meats. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper, let sit for about a minute so it develops a nice sear, then break up and stir using a spatula or wooden spoon. Continue until it is cooked through and may be starting to stick to the pan a little. Drain off excess fat at this point if you like (you may need to add in more olive oil, however, if everything starts to stick in the next step).

Add the onion, garlic, and carrot and toss thoroughly. Cook until the onions are soft, stirring frequently. Do not let anything stick to the bottom and do not let the onions burn. When the onions are soft (about 5 minutes), add the wine and scrape the bottom of the pan to deglaze it. Cook the wine on high heat until the alcohol has completely burned off, about a minute, then add the milk. Stir once or twice to thoroughly combine, then reduce the heat to medium.

Add the tomato paste and dried herbs, and stir the mixture thoroughly. Simmer at low heat for about an hour. If it gets too dry (it should not), add chicken stock or water in small batches, say 1 or 2 TBSP at a time.

After an hour, mount it with butter and add the cheese. If you’re cooking pasta alongside it, as I usually am, add a bit of pasta water to balance out the consistency. You want it to be saucy enough that everything is coated, but it will remain chunky.

Just before tossing with the pasta, roughly tear the basil leaves or chiffonade them and fold into the sauce with the heat off. Do not do this in advance.

Toss with the pasta, reserving some pasta water to balance out the consistency if necessary, and serve immediately with great heaping portions or grated reggiano. Enjoy.