Ragu’ alla bolognese (ragout bolognaise) ala Ivanet

One of  my favorite dish to cook and eat.
It is pretty simple but (like all good good things) it takes a while before it’s ready and today i’ve started cooking quite late.

What do you need?
1.  1 good carrot
2.  1 good onion
3.  2 celery sticks
4.  some dried mushrooms
5.  2 garlic pieces (not heads just 2 little ones)
6.  some beef mince of good quality.. let’s say a half a kilo.
7.  2 or 3 cans of good whole peeled tomatoes
8.  Olive oil
9.  a bottle of good red wine.. I’m using a Merlot del Garda from Italy
10. salt, pepper, cloves, nutmeg

Preparation.. before you light that fire:
– Start by leaving the dried mushrooms in a cup with in really hot water for an half an hour. In the meantime finely chop the onion, the carrot, the celery and the garlic. I used a kitchen robot and I’ve waited for the mushroom to be soft so I could add ’em to the veggie mix and chop all together with a spoon of wine and a bit of the water form the mushrooms.

Ok.. light that fire now.. but keep it medium/low
– Put some olive oil in a deep pot on that medium-low fire. After less than 1 minute place the veggies+mushroom mix in the pot with a half a glass of red wine (we’re going to use a lot of that later).
– when the wine starts to dry out put all of the beef mince in the pot and stir strongly so the veggies will mix with the beef. It will be very dry so add the left over water from the mushroom (remember the hot water) and another good glass of wine. Let it cook for some minutes till it starts to dry out.  In the meantime add salt and pepper (as you like ’em), nutmeg (3 sparkle), cloves (1 sparkle) and another little bit of oil.. and stir..stir..
– Now before you burn everything you should add the key ingredient, the tomato sauce, but since most of the time the whole peeled tomatoes are “whole” you should make your mind if you like them so coarse of if you might blend ’em to make the final result more creamy… either way it’s ok.. I like more creamy so I blended 2 cans of whole peeled tomatoes and add them into my  pot.. I stirred.. God I stirred..

The hard part is done.
Now you should just make sure that all the watery part goes quite dry and everything blends together. It will take a while (1 or 2 hours) and a lot of stirring every now and then to make sure it doesn’t stick to your pot. In fact meanwhile I’m writing this post I am in that phase. If you feel your mix is getting too dry add some some more wine.. Oh, you finished it by drinking? no worries, add some water then but it will be less tasty.

When you think all the ingredients are cooked enough and your mix looks very good and smells really nice.. add the secret ingredients (that I didn’t mentioned before)  1 tea spoon tomato paste (or 1 teaspoon of Heinz Ketchup) to  give that tasty feeling to you sauce. ..and stir.. stir.. stir till all blend nicely. I call it the secret ingredient because usually Italians don’t add this but Italian Chefs do. If you don’t add the secret ingredient, no problem it will be good anyway.

Are you still stirring.. stop.. I think it’s ready.. It doesn’t have to get too dry but at same time it has to be dry enough not to be a soup. Usually in this moment I add a bit of milk to make it even more creamy, but once the milk is inside, you have to make sure that the salt taste is good to you. Milk eliminate salt giving your sauces a bit of sweetness. Did you add the milk? What should you do now?.. you guessed right.. STIR.! Give it a few minute to dry at the right point and you are done! Off that Fire.

THE PASTA
For this sauce I usually use some Tagliatelle or Fusilli but spaghetti are good too.
Fill another pot with half of it’s volume with water and add one fist of salt for each person eating then place on the fire to boil. Once the water is boiling weight 100 grams of pasta for each person eating, add it to the water and.. guess what.. STIR MAN! Don’t let that pasta stick together. No worries, in 5 to 10 minutes (depending of the pasta) you should be done.  Make sure you taste it and you get that “al dente” byte that shoul’d be to soft and not too hard in the core.

Think it’s now ready.. strain the pasta and mix it with your ragu’ (one fat spoon per person) on your serving dishes. If you have some parmesan cheese, be generous with that, it is always welcome.

…and good appetite!

PS: My wife was so hungry that I forgot to take the picture to the final dish (sorry). No problem, the beauty of this recipe is that you made so much ragout that you can use it 2 or 3 times. Just remember to store it in the fridge as soon is is cold and heat it up with some butter the next time you want to use it. I suggest to finish it in 2 days max.. after that it could go bad.

Please leave me you comments if you like this.