Tagliatelle Bolognese

This blog was instigated by my girlfriend (she had to convince me that it was a good idea, I was too lazy to start it), so I thought that the first recipe should be her favorite dish. You may wonder why I've put up a recipe for tagliatelle instead of spaghetti bolognese, which is more common (in the English-speaking world, anyway): the reason is that a Bolognian friend of mine told me that in Bologna, they never eat their ragu with spaghetti, always with fresh tagliatelle. So, here's my attempt at authenticity, although I'm sure there are other aspects of this recipe that would be frowned upon in its birthplace. You can certainly eat the ragu with good quality dry spaghetti as I do when I don't have the time to make fresh pasta. The best dry spaghettis have a very rough surface that allows the sauce to cling to the pasta instead of sitting on the bottom of the plate, and they are invariably imported from Italy. This recipe should be enough for 4-6 people.

For the ragu

500g ground beef

1 carrot, grated

1 celery stalk, chopped as finely as possible

1 onion, chopped as finely as possible

~1 can of san marzano tomatoes, blended smooth and passed through a strainer

~1 cup white wine

1 clove garlic

1 bay leaf

2-3 sprigs of thyme

olive oil and/or clarified butter for sauteing and browning

a bit of cream or milk (optional)

Drain as much of the tomato juice out of the can as possible (if you leave the juice, the sauce will be too runny), then, blend them until smooth. Pass the tomato puree through a sieve to catch the seeds - they completely ruin the texture of the ragu. When you pass purees through a sieve, you will have to force them through using a spoon; if you just pour a blended mixture into a sieve it will simply sit there because it is too thick.

Preheat a heavy pan until it's very hot, then use either a couple tablespoons of clarified butter or olive oil (I think it tastes better with the clarified butter but it's probably not very Italian) to brown the ground beef. If the meat doesn't sizzle violently when you put it in the pan, it's not hot enough - take it back out and wait. As the meat cooks, it will release some water which will have to evaporate before it can really brown properly, so give it the time it needs. Once the water has evaporated, you will hear the meat sizzling again; keep breaking it into small pieces and scraping the bottom of the pan until the meat is golden brown. The reason you want to brown the meat is to caramelize it and develop flavor, otherwise, you might as well have insipid boiled beef. Once it's done, put the meat in a strainer to drain off the excess fat. Put the wine in the frying pan and scrape any brown bits that were stuck to the bottom - those little bits have a ton of flavor, don't discard them.

In a pre-heated pot, saute the onions until they are translucent but not brown. Then add the celery, and after a couple of minutes, the carrots. After a further couple of minutes, add the meat and the wine from above to the pot and mix well. Then add enough tomatoes to cover (you won't need the whole can) and season with salt and pepper. The next little bit is a technique that's used quite often in French cooking, but I don't know how Italian it is; nevertheless, I think it improves the sauce, so in this case, to hell with authenticity. Take the garlic, bay leaf and thyme, wrap them in cheesecloth, tie everything tightly with kitchen string, and put the whole thing into the sauce. The purpose of these so-called bouquet garnis is to delicately infuse the flavors into the sauce without being too overpowering (I rarely put garlic directly into anything). Put the lid on the pot, turn the heat down to low, and simmer for at least one hour, preferably three to four; the longer you simmer the ragu, the better the flavors will develop. Once it's finished, check the seasoning again, take out the bouquet garni (you can now throw it away, it's done its job), and add a bit of cream or milk to add a nice texture to the sauce. Apparently, they add cream in Modena, but not in Bologna.

For the tagliatelle 

4 egg yolks

2 whole eggs

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon salt

1.5 - 2 cups all purpose flour

Making fresh pasta isn't as daunting as one may think. However, like most acquired skills, it won't turn out perfect the first time, so if you want to get it right, you will have to be persistent. The fastest and easiest way to mix the ingredients is in a food processor, but of course, you can do it by hand in a bowl as well. It is always safest to have a dough that is too wet rather than one that is too dry, so be careful about how much flour use initially. I usually put in about 1.5 cups of flour and mix in a food processor, then slowly add more to get something that resembles a crumble pastry. Then, turn out the loose dough onto a well-floured counter-top and kneed until you have a smooth, homogeneous dough. If it's too wet, it will keep sticking to your hands, so if this happens, just add a bit more flour. Once you have a finished dough, put it in a ziplock bag and into the fridge for at least 20 minutes, or at most a day (you can make the dough in advance and just roll it out the next day to save some time). 

Take the chilled dough out of the fridge, flour it generously, and flatten it enough so that it will fit through the thickest setting on your pasta machine (you can roll it out using a rolling pin, but it will take much longer). Pass it through the machine twice, then put it on the next setting and continue this process sequentially until you reach the thinnest or second thinnest setting on your machine. At this point, you will have a long, thin sheet of pasta. If you're doing this by yourself, it will take some practice to operate the crank and grab the pasta as it comes out of the other side, but with practice, it's no problem. Then use the attachment on your machine to cut the sheets into tagliatelle. Throughout the whole process, ensure that the pasta is well-floured, otherwise the tagliatelle will stick together once they've been cut and ruin all of your hard work. Boil the tagliatelle in salted boiling water for about 3 minutes (the cooking time depends on how thinly you rolled the pasta, so just eat a bit of it to make sure it's cooked). After draining, make sure to toss the pasta with olive oil immediately, otherwise it will stick together in a huge lump.

This may seem like a lot of work for some pasta and sauce (with practice, the amount of work naturally decreases), but I assure you that if you get it right, it is just as satisfying and delicious as a very sophisticated dish. You can certainly take shortcuts in the recipe, however, you have to bear in mind that there is a price to be paid for facilitation, and it is quality.