I've asked the family to take on cooking duties since my ME has been bad. Today I saw bolognese was on the menu. A jar of bolognese sauce was in the cupboard.
I shuddered a little at the thought of an overly sweet store sauce bolognese. It's a meal which should be thick and hearty with a depth of flavours from various ingredients brought together - sugar is not one of the ingredients.
I decided to take matters into my own hands.
First, a trip to the shops:
well, the passata, tomato, and carrots were already in the house.
First I prepped the soffritto, the mix of fine chopped carrot, celery, and onion - I use some nice large shallots. The herb in the pic is a little fresh rosemary:
Next, the meat mix. Traditionaly this is a mix of beef and pork. I used mostly beef (a pound of 5% & 12% fat), mixed with a pack of streaky bacon chopped fine. A generous sprinkle of salt was mixed in at this point.
The meat was browned off and then spooned out of the pan (well, my Ninja Foodi). Some olive oil was added to the fat and liquor from the cooked meat, and then the soffrito went in to cook down for a good spell.
The meat was added back, then the pasatta and tomato went in, followed by a generous glug of red wine. I brought the heat up to a firm boil, then turned it down to simmer and let it do so for a good four or five hours.
The last thing to cook, is th pasta. I'n not sure if the original picture really shows it, but as you see below it is longer than the average spaghetti. It measures half-a-metre, 50 cm, or 19.5 inches:
Now, traditionally you add some milk, or even cream, to the bolognese near the end of it cooking. But there's a member of the family with dairy issues, so none went in and, as you see below, they also didn't get any parmesan on top. Some fresh chopped basil adds a nice fresh zing. As you see, it's served la Inglese with the bolognese piled on the spaghetti, instead of mixed through as nonna would do it.
The great thing is, making a massive pot like this, we had dinner today, and there's enough gone into the freezer for another two meals. So bolognese can go on the menu without me worrying about it being knocked together in 30 minutes with store bought sauce.
For those interested the approximate ingredient list to make a batch of bolognese this size is:
1 kilo / 2 lb of mince,
300 gm / 10 oz streaky bacon (I used smoked),
500 gm / 1lb each carrot/celery/onion
1 litre passata
1 can tomato
half bottle red wine
Fresh rosemary
Fresh basil
Italian herbs