Bolognese Sauce

Living in Modena, there is no need to make Bolognese sauce myself. If I crave it, we usually head to one of the local restaurants and have the best traditional homemade tagliatelle al ragù. A was away for the weekend so I had a little time on my hands for a cooking project so I decided to make my own Bolognese sauce. When I first made this a couple of years ago, I followed Lidia Bastianich's Bolognese Ricetta Tradizionale. This time around, I winged it and made the sauce sans recipe. I'll try do my best to explain my version below, but for a more structured recipe, just follow the one on Lidia's site. 

First step is to prep the tomatoes. You can always used canned, but since tomatoes are in season, I decided use fresh ones. Rinse and score each tomato with a "X," which makes them easy to peel off the skin

 Boil the tomatoes in water for about 30 seconds to 1 minute or until you start seeing the skin peel away. Plunge into ice cold water immediately to stop the tomatoes from cooking. 

The skin on each tomato should easily slip away. 

Gather the remaining ingredients. For the tomatoes, cut them in half and seed them, saving the juice. After this step, I roughly chop them. Instead of making Bolognese, you can simply cook the tomatoes with some olive oil, garlic, onion, salt and pepper to make a delicious, fresh tomato sauce. For the Bolognese, I decided to use my immersion blender to make a purée. 

Chop the vegetable very finely. You can even use a food processor to do this. 

Cook the vegetables on medium heat in a few tablespoons of olive oil for few minutes until they start to sweat. Then add about 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. Next, add the ground beef and ground veal and cook until browned. Add 1 cup of red wine and simmer for a few minutes. Add the fresh tomato puree and reserved tomato juice plus 6 bay leaves. Now it's time to let the sauce simmer on low heat for 3 to 4 hours. The liquid should cover the meat and vegetables during the entire simmering process. I checked on the sauce every 20 minutes to give it a good stir. I had enough liquid from the tomatoes that I didn't need to add anything extra, but you should use chicken broth or in a pinch, water will do just fine. Also don't forget to season it with salt and pepper. 

After 4 hours, the sauce reduced more than half and looked like this. I had about 10 cups. 

Most of the sauce will be frozen for quick weeknight meals, but I reserved some since I was craving baked ziti or baked penne in this case! I gathered some fresh ricotta, mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano and chopped some basil. 

I layered it all between some whole wheat penne.

And topped it with the mozzarella and parmigiano. Yum. 

Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 180 Celsius. 

Bolognese Sauce 

Ingredients

2 kilos plum tomatoes, skin peeled, seeds removed and blended 

3 carrots, finely chopped

3 stalks of celery, finely chopped

3 small yellow onions, finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic

2 tablespoon tomato paste

300 grams ground veal

350 grams ground beef

1 cup red wine (I used Pinot Noir)

6 bay leaves

salt & pepper

chicken broth or water (if necessary) 

For directions, follow the steps above! Or for a more structured recipe, visit Lidia Bastianich's site. This sauce is best served with fresh tagliatelle or ricotta tortelloni. It also freezes very well. 

Enjoy!