Homemade pasta sauces, your favorites

I'll come back to read this thread, as I'm fed up with ready made pasta sauce (always way too salty) and am determined to learn a bit of cooking in 2008.
I have tried mucking about with tinned toms and a bit of garlic, but it always ends up tasting of tinned toms and garlic that's just been warmed through. There's obviously other stuff that should be going into the mix somewhere.


I'll be back.

Re Hazan's recipe, I'll start with the ragu'. Quoting from here on, and I'll try to put any comments I can't resist in brackets. Some punctuation may differ.



Ragu'
Meat Sauce, Bolognese Style

Ragu' is not to be confused with ragout. A ragout is a French meat stew, while ragu' is Bologna's meat sauce for seasoning its homemade pasta. The only thing they share is the common and justified origin in the verb ragouter, which means "to excite the appetite."

A properly made ragu' clinging to the folds of homemade noodles is one of the most satisfying experiences accessible to the sense of taste. It is no doubt one of the greatest attractions of the enchanting city of Bologna, and the Bolognese claim one cannot make a true ragu' anywhere else. This may be so, but with a little care, we can come very close to it. There are three essential points you must remember to make a successful ragu'.

* The meat must be sauteed just barely long enough to lose its raw color. It must not brown or it will lose delicacy.
* It must be cooked in milk before the tomatoes are added. This keeps the meat creamier and sweeter tasting.
* It must cook at the merest simmer for a long, long time. The minimum is 3 1/2 hours; 5 is better.

The union of tagliatelle and ragu' is a marriage made in heaven, but ragu' is also very good with tortellini, it is indispensable in lasagne, and is excellent with such macaroni as rigatoni, ziti, conchiglie, and rotelle. Whenever a menuy lists pasta alla bolognese, that means it is served with ragu'.

For 6 servings, or 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 cups

2 tbs chopped yellow onion
3 tbs olive oil
3 tbs butter
2 tbs chopped celery
2 tbs chopped carrot
[the battuto, says osso]

3/4 pound ground lean beef, preferably chuck or the meat from the neck
[osso - I sincerely doubt she means 7% fat, I'd use at least 15%]

salt
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup milk [I think she means whole milk, and don't play with that myself]
1/8 tsp nutmeg
2 cups canned italian tomatoes, roughly chopped, with their juice.

1. An earthenware pot should be your first choice for making ragu'. If you don't have one available, use a heavy, enameled cast-iron casserole, the deepest one you have (to keep the ragu from reducing too quickly). Put in the [battuto] chopped onion, with all the oil and butter, celery and carrot and cook gently for 2 minutes.
[I use my army navy store cast iron, no enamel, dutch oven]

2. Add the gound beef, crumbling it in the pot with a fork. Add 1 tsp sallt, stir, and cook only until the meat has lost its raw, red color. Add the wine, turn the heat up to medium high, and cook, stirring occasionally, until all the wine has evaporated. [err on the side of too little cooking, I'd say]

3. Turn the heat down to medium, add the milk and the nutmeg, and cook until the milk has [pretty much] evaporated. Stir frequently.

4. When the milk has evaporated, add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly. When the tomatoes have started to bubble, turn the heat down until the sauce cooks at the laziest simmer, just and occasional bubble. [italics osso] Cook, uncovered for a minimum of 3 1/2 to 4 hours, stirring occasionally. Taste and correct for salt. (If you cannot watch the sauce for such a long stretch, you can turn off the heat and rsume cooking it later on. But do finish cooking it in one day.)

Note: Ragu' can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or frozen. Reheat until it simmers for about 15 minutes before using.





OK, that's enough. This is really good with homemade tagliatelle, fettucine, but there must be a zillion directions for that online. Can even be done without any machines at all, without even a regular old hand pasta maker. May post on that later.

My own bias against glassed sauces is that most of them have tomato paste in them, and I can pick that up a mile away. I suppose there may be some tomato paste I'll like some day, should I ever catch a plane to southern italy, but not yet.

Feel free, hah, to say that at a2k, to disagree with me, on tomato paste, or of course other stuff.

Oh, and I usually double the recipe, as long as I'm doing this, which adds a level of travail. I guess I'd follow it exactly the first time.

bookmarking.

Hoping to pick up to pick up a few new ideas here.

Thanks, osso.

What msolga said (switches on printer).

I'm so hoping that there'll be at least one utterly unique Imur recipe here! :wink:

I would share my technique, but people always sneer when they hear how much comes out of cans.

In one of my first renditions of trying to post this, grrrrr, I noted how it will seem bland to some of us. I myself can barely stop from hurling in some garlic.. and have been known to fail in the effort,

but, try it first without. This is the, or a, basic recipe of the region.

Osso, that looks very good. The only sauce I know how to make is also one of the few things I can make without a recipe. The only thing I learned how to cook from watching my mom, there must be something I'm doing differently though because my mom's sauce always came out orange and thicker than mine.

osso

I was interested in the use of milk in Marcella Hazan's recipe. I've never come across that in a meat sauce before (not that I'm any sort of expert, or anything! :wink:) Unusual. But you'd recommend it?

Yes, garlic would improve just about anything, I reckon, osso!

(Even some desserts! )

even la marcella mentions cans...

personally, I prefer good canned to cardboard tomatoes, as well as icky expensive and lame hot house tomatoes, those really annoy me.



this recipe has to do with the milk, the meat, the very slow cooking. At its best, glorious.




But this is not the only sauce...

Milk is key to some of her recipes, and she only reflects the region, as Bologna et al was there before her, and as I may remember, she's not from there. She is (not just) a reporter. Milk has to do with the velvet.

But wait, I don't expect all casalinga recipes to be so, so, so... spare.




Wanna hear more.

More, we want more!

Not today, just getting spare right takes some doing...

although, I've probably posted re the Romanoli's porchetta... and there's a keeper.

next time I simmer...
Thank you Ossobuco for the trip down memory lane. Oh bolognese. My long lost friend. I always thought there was more than one meat in the sauce. When I was a kid, there was a place in Detroit that had my favorite bolognese. The waiter would tell me to leave a bit on my plate. He would return from the kitchen with a full order in a carryout container. My jambalaya was mediocre at best. Failed to sample new chicken stock, sodium overload. Opened up my last can of tomatoes from the garden. I'd never survive in a bomb shelter.