One of the most famous Italian sauces is RAGU. It's also known as Ragu alla Bolognese or sometimes even just Bolognese (abroad and not in Italy).
In Italy every dish has it's own regional origin, Ragu comes from the Italian region called Emilia-Romagna with it's main city - Bologna, from which Ragu takes it's name: Ragu alla Bolognese.
Ragu is a meat-base sauce with the add of tomato and not vice versa as it's cooked in other countries. So there's more meat then tomato in this sauce. The other difference is that the original Ragu is simmered for many hours and believe me you will feel the difference.... They used to cook Ragu on a wood stove even for 6 hours!
Ragu traditionally dresses the wide long formats of pasta as Tagliatelle, Fettuccine, Pappardelle. It is also very popular as an ingredient of Lasagna. Sometimes you may find the short pasta like Rigatoni, Penne or Paccheri (on the photo) with Ragu. And as a very special way of using ragu is to stuff the big formats of pasta like Lumaconi (snails) and cook them in the oven with mozzarella and Parmigiano cheese....
Two more things to let you know:
1. Some people think that Ragu is a kind of meat stew... it's not! It's a sauce.
2. Ragu is never served with Spaghetti in Italy as the meat pieces will not stick to this kind of pasta.
Be patient with this sauce and the taste will be rewarding!!!
INGREDIENTS:
Servings: 1.8-2l of sauce
800-900g minced mixed meat (beef-pork)
4 sausages (400g)
700ml tomato puree
2 carrots
1 big onion
2 celery stalks
1 bay leaf
1 rosemary sprig
200ml red wine
veg. stock cube
salt
pinch of sugar
100ml EVO oil
The quantity I prepare is very generous, but as this sauce is very laborious to prepare I prefer to cook a bit more and then store it...
Note: Before you start cooking, as for the pan, use a thick bottom one, as the cooking process is long and we don't want the sauce to stick to the bottom of the pan....
1. Chop onion and celery finely.
2. Grate the carrot. Or as an option you may chop everything with an electric chopper.
3. Pour some EVO oil into a big sauce pan and add carrots, onion, celery and simmer till the vegetables are golden brown.
4. Peel the sausage and break it into tiny pieces, add it to the meat that you put in a bowl and mix well.
5. Add the minced meat to the veges, stir vigorously to have a homogeneous mixture.
6. Splash with some red wine and let the alcohol evaporate, smell it to feel if there's still some alcohol.
7. Cook till the meat will become lighter in colour, for about 15 minutes at a medium heat.
8. Prepare vegetable broth (use a stock cube).
7. Add tomato puree and half a glass of vegetable broth to the meat mix and stir. Add a pinch of sugar together with tomato puree to neutralize the acidity of tomato.
8. Add a bay leaf, rosemary sprig and vegetable stock.
9. Cover the sauce with a lid and cook at a low heat stirring from time to time (every 10-15 minutes). When you notice that the sauce becomes too thick, add half a glass of broth (better unsalted veg. broth) and stir.
10. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and try if you feel the sauce needs more.
11. From the moment you added tomato puree, cook for at least 2 hours, constantly stirring and adding broth to dilute.
Note: I usually cook this sauce for 2-3 hours but traditionally it was cooked for 6-8 hours.
Note: The secrets of this sauce are:
- using mixed mince,
- stirring constantly, about every 10 minutes,
- cooking at a low heat,
- adding some water or better vegetable broth (unsalted) when needed,
- cooking from two to three hours.
12. When the sauce is ready it will have a thick and granular consistency, reddish brown colour and a rich flavour that will fill in the whole your house....
Note: You may divide the sauce into portions and freeze them, then you will have a ready sauce when you need it!
Finally I got some nice artichokes and it's already ages I have been dreaming about cooking my green lasagna... Why green? Because the lasagna sheets I use for it are made with spinach and have a green colour. You may say it's a vegetarian lasagna, no meat, just veges... I do understand that in other countries it's not easy to find this type of lasagna sheets but if you cannot find them you may use the white ones.
INGREDIENTS:
Servings: 4-6
250g green lasagna sheets
1 big artichoke
400g mushrooms
300-350g mozzarella cheese
100g Parmigiano
2-3 garlic cloves
salt
EVO oil
For Bechamel:
0.6-0.7l milk
50g butter
2,5 tbs flour
salt
nutmeg
First prepare Bechamel sauce. This sauce is widely used in French and Italian cuisine. It is basically a milk sauce thickened with Roux, that is a mix of butter and flour. In the reastaurants they prepare roux in great quantities and keep it in the fridge, they obviously use it to thicken different sauces.
1. To prepare Roux melt butter in a sauce pan and when it just starts boiling add flour and mix well, keep cooking till the mix will get a nice golden caramel colour.
2. Heat the milk apart, but don't boil it to avoid forming of the cream film on it.
3. Add milk to the Roux little by little and stir vigorously with a whisk to remove any crumble.
4. Cook over a medium heat constantly stirring for about 5 minutes, by that time the sauce will thicken. But don't forget stirring well!!!
5. At the end season with some salt to taste and half a teaspoon of grated nutmeg.
6. Pour hot Bechamel into a large bowl and cover it with a plastic film paying attention to adhere the film onto the sauce surface. This will avoid forming of lumps.
Now, we prepare two types of fillings for our lasagna.
1. You may use one big artichoke or couple of small ones. But take the fresh artichokes not the canned ones. Clean artichokes as it is explained HERE. As an alternative you may use frozen artichokes...
2. Slice artichokes finely and cook them with some EVO oil in a frying pan till they are nice and golden. Salt them to taste. If you like you may add some chilli.
3. Clean and chop mushrooms. Cut into halves two garlic cloves.
4. In a separate frying pan heat some EVO oil and brown a bit the onion, add mushrooms and cook them till the golden colour. Take the garlic away.
At this point we are ready to gather our lasagna.
I use here the green fresh lasagna sheets, if you cannot find these, you may try with the usual white fresh lasagna sheets... if you cannot find these... then use the dry lasagna and check it out on the box if you need to boil the sheets in advance...
1. Prepare mozzarella: squeeze the cheese from it's whey ad cut into small cubes. You may use mozzarella for pizza, the one that is sold without whey. But please, please, don't use grated mozzarella. This Italian cheese doesn't exist grated in Italy and as the cheese is Italian, so.....
2. Grate Parmigiano cheese finely.
3. Pour some EVO oil into a ceramic/glass pan and spread some Bechamel as well. Here comes the first lasagna sheet.
4. Choose one from the two fillings and spread on the first lasagna sheet, then spread some Bechamel sauce, some mozzarella and a handful of Parmigiano.
5. Lasagna sheet again, the second type of filling, mozzarella and Parmigiano.
6. Continue with the layers alternating the fillings. You need to make about 5-6 layers.
7. Add more Parmigiano on top of lasagna.
8. Cook in the preheated oven at 200C for 25-30 minutes. At the end the top should be nicely golden. You may try a tiny corner of the upper layer to see if it's ready. You may also try it with a knife, making a tiny cut somewhere in the centre of lasagna.
Wait for about 10 minutes before serving as a just-ready lasagna burns....
Buon Appetito!!!
1 big onion
1. Chop onion and celery finely.
