BOLOGNESE

a slow simmer for a winter's day

I am about to start making bolognese. It’s a very cold Tuesday (my Sunday), the one that forces you inside. The one that finally tells me it’s ok to rest, to nest, to do nothing. So often my doing nothing is passing the hours on a screen, watching people cook, clean, eat, try on clothes in well edited VERY short videos. I emerge out of the haze feeling kinda gross, judgmental (towards myself…mostly.) Chores, projects and hobbies take me a while and unfortunately aren’t edited to feel more concise. So this weekend, instead of rushing from project to project, I leaned into the slowness of my activities: knitting, reading and making a long cooking sauce while listening to records.

Cooking a long sauce requires a lot. I am not going to mince words; from gathering ingredients, cleaning the kitchen and finally prepping. Watching a thirty second video of someone making such a sauce feels……well…harmful to me. Yes, I said it. My first thought being: “wow my sauce took way longer than I anticipated.” Second thought: “wow, they made that look sooo easy.” Or “damn, their kitchen is really well organized.” It starts the recipe with a hefty dose of comparison and generous amount of expectation (weird, because I didn’t see that in the ingredient list.) And to be honest, it doesn’t leave room for my own experience with all its nuance and perhaps chaos of attempting to cook. Without it, my cooking feels so much richer.

So for my first recipe of 2025, I give you Bolognese. A sauce that probably shouldn’t be summed up in thirty second video. It’s a sauce I can spend an afternoon with; an antidote to the sped up version our life can take while looking at a phone.

This recipe is very similar to Hazan’s classic version. Like Hazan, the liquids get added one by one, letting the meat simmer until the liquid has almost all evaporated. The key is in the order in which these liquids are added to ensure a tender Bolognese. Per Marcella, the milk at the beginning helps to ensure a gentle braising effect to the ground meat. But my recipe differs in a few ways most notably: I like to add WAY MORE tomatoes. I like the brightness the tomato adds in cutting through the richness of a meat sauce. I also add pancetta, sage and a Parmesan rind. I feel like my version feels very Italian American. I am ok with that. I am.

Bolognese can be served with a pasta of your choosing. Tagliatelle being traditional. It makes a delicious lasagna. Or I also love Bolognese dolloped in the middle of polenta. This recipe makes a large batch so I freeze jars for easy dinners or gift to friends who could use a helping hand that week.

Bertie smells pancetta + still life mise en place

BOLOGNESE

yields 4 qrt - feel free to cut this in half

2lb beef

2 lb pork

6oz pancetta - about 1 thick slice

2 cup onions minced

1 cup celery minced

1 cup carrot minced

2 28 oz cans tomatoes crushed tomatoes ( its a lot!)

2 cups wine - I think red or white works fine - whatever is leftover

1 qrt whole milk

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp black pepper

10 leaves of sage - finely chopped

1-2 parm rinds

2 ½ tsp salt added to batches of meat + more to taste

1 oz butter

olive oil as needed

In a large dutch oven, over medium heat, add pancetta and and ¼ cup water. The water will help draw out the fat. The water will evaporate in 5 minutes and fat should be what is left. ( If there isn’t any still…add 1 TAB olive oil) and continue to cook until pancetta turns crispy, darkening in color and the pieces with more fat develop a golden amber hue. Remove with a slotted spoon. Add the meat into two batches. I added one pound of beef and one pound of pork at a time. Break up with a wooden spoon and leave to get crispy, add 1 - 1 1/2 tsp of kosher salt. After 3 – 4 minutes, use a spatula and break up the meat a bit more. Some browning should have occurred. Its ok if its not than brown--- on one hand I appreciate the flavor developed by our friend the Maillard reaction but on the other hand, some recipes (and Marcella herself) think no color yields a more tender final product. I land somewhere in the middle, a little browning is nice, but it’s ok if it’s not completely brown. Once I have some browning and the meat is broken up, I remove it with a slotted spoon, about 10 minutes per batch. To be honest with a large batch, I use a fine mesh strainer over a big bowl and I dump the meat into the strainer to catch all the fat. I add some fat back, and then proceed with the second batch, Repeating the whole process again.

After both meat batches are out. I add back 2 -3 TAB of the fat, 1 oz butter and I sweat the “soffritto”: onions, carrots and celery in Italian. I let this cook for about 5 – 10 minutes. I add the sage, nutmeg, black pepper, a good sprinkle of salt. And then I add back the meat and pancetta. Then I add the milk and parmesean rind. The milk should cover the meat ( just barely.) If not, add a splash more to ensure the meat is just covered. Turn the heat to low, and let it simmer. Stirring every ten minutes or so until the milk is almost gone. There should be just a little liquid (like maybe a quarter of the original amount) in the pot. This should take about 35 min to 1 hour. I keep stirring once and a while to ensure no sticking has occurred. Again important to use a heavy bottomed pot which tends to scortch less.

Once the milk is almost gone, add the wine. And again, I am going to repeat the process I did with milk, almost cooking it out. Because the liquid is a bit less, this one took probably 20 minutes less. When the liquid is almost gone, finally add the tomatoes. With the tomatoes, I am trying to reduce the liquid by half. This takes about another hour, again at allow it to simmer, never boil. Once the tomatoes are added, I taste for seasoning. I find I know the sauce is cooked, when the tomatoes have started reduced and a layer of fat starts to bubble at the top. Taste one last time for seasoning. Serve with pasta and lots of Parmesan.