A Love Letter To The NEW Bolognese
I struggle with pasta. It is not that I don’t like it, rather I have never felt advanced enough to begin to replicate what I perceived as the classics. And then I went to Italy. My expectation was that I would be able to taste the history and culture of Italy. You know how people take a bite of food and say it transports them to, “the rolling tuscan hills”? That is what I wish happened. I was surprised, to say the least, by the dimensionality of each dish I consumed. Italian food is known for its simplicity; when you order Pici alla Pomodoro what you get is: Pici (hand rolled pasta), tomatoes, salt, garlic, parmesan and maybe basil. I have no issues with this, but with every bite, you beg for more flavor. I was stuck feeling as though the classics may have not been enough for my palate. After years of not touching Italian recipes in fear that the food gods would exile me for cooking too complex, all I wished for was more flavor. Fast-forward two weeks and I began to wonder if it was possible to make a dish as comforting as bolognese. On a brisk Wednesday night in Copenhagen, my roommate Aidan announced his plans to make bolognese that night for dinner. He had bought ground pork, canned tomatoes and white wine from the local grocery store. I immediately joined in, never having made the dish but intrigued by the thought of the final products warmth and comfort on that windy evening. To my surprise the bolognese was unbelievably good. I seasoned at every step and simmered the sauce for an extremely long time. We were shocked at how much flavor we could pack into the sauce with such minimal ingredients. A lightbulb went off in my head and from that point on I started to test, altering ingredients and cook times. Playing around with ratios and balancing spice levels based on the amount of time spent infusing in the sauce. Here it is. While it may not be traditional by any means, the layers of complex flavors are beyond what I have seen and studied. On a chilly day, nothing warms the heart up more than a bowl of rich bolognese.
This deceivingly complicated recipe may have a lot of ingredients, but most of them should be in your pantry larder already. And while you may think it takes forever, I will show you how to divvy up tasks so that all four roommates stay busy and can get this on the stove boiling away. Once the base of the sauce is made, the only job is to stir the pot every 30 minutes to prevent burning. However, in order to create the most perfect, luscious, intense base, you need quite a lot of elbow grease. I recommend making this on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon when you have finished your weekends work and would otherwise be stuck on your couch binging the newest season of some TV drama series. The bolognese base requires attention and care. You MUST give it the love it deserves. For if you do, you will NOT regret it. Two ingredients are optional, however, I highly advise you to seek them out.
6 Servings
Ingredients
400g beef, ground
400g pork, ground
100g pancetta, diced (alternatively use bacon or guancale)
100g lardo, diced (optional)
1 medium-large onion, diced as small as possible
1 large carrot, diced as small as possible
1-2 celery stalks, diced as small as possible
4-5 large garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp dried mushroom (optional)
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 1/2 tsp chili flake
1 1/2 tsp fennel seed
1 cup white wine
4 cups whole milk
4 cups canned whole tomatoes, crushed
4 cups chicken stock, store-bought or homemade (homemade is 100% better)
2 dried bay leaf
2 tbsp fresh rosemary
5 sprigs fresh thyme
3 sprigs fresh sage
1/4 cup parsley and stems
Pinch nutmeg
Fresh basil, a lot
Extra virgin olive oil, to taste
Unsalted butter, to taste
1 large piece aged Parmigiano Reggiano with rind (48 months aged is my preference)
Kosher salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
600g dried paperdelle or Lumache pasta
Materials
Large pot (preferably dutch oven)
Frying pan
Chefs knife
Cutting board
Wooden spatula
Silicon spatula
Ladle
Tongs
spider
Cheese grater/microplane
Roommate Assignments
Roommate 1: The leader.
You set the pace for the recipe. Your three roommates are at your command. If one is moving too slow or too fast, correct their actions. Your job includes tossing every ingredient into the pot at each given time. It is also your job to check for seasoning. You should be the roommate who knows the most about culinary technique.
Roommate 2: The work horse.
We get it, you work out. Prove your gains by stirring. For every step, you will be standing over the pot scraping the bottom and making sure the heat is evenly distributed. You should also help dice all of the vegetables and cured meat before the cooking starts.
Roommate 3: The less intelligent one/least interested.
Your job is to salt and boil the water as well as try the pasta and tell roommate 4 when it is done. You are in charge of the kitchen music as you will have the most down time.
Roommate 4: The artistic one.
You begin by measuring out all of the ingredients. Once the sauce is done, your will man the frying pan, performing steps 15-17. Plate the bolognese as pretty as you can. This dish deserves an Instagram/Snapchat appearance so make it look attractive.
Instructions
To begin, in a heavy bottom pot on low to medium heat sweat the pancetta and lardo until the fat has rendered. Stir with a wooden spatula. If you do not have one, silicon will work. It is not essential that the pancetta fully crisps, but most of the fat should be rendered in order to obtain the smoky flavor. If you are also using lardo, it is cured pork fat so the goal is to render as much as possible.
Once the cured meats has been cooked off, add a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil to your pot.
Still on low to medium heat, add the diced onion, carrot, celery and garlic. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Sweat these ingredients. Your goal isn’t to get color, rather cook the color and moisture out of the vegetables.
Add dried mushroom, ground beef and pork to the pot. You do not need to rehydrate the mushrooms because they will obtain moisture from the sauce as it boils.
Turn your heat up to medium-high. Here is your chance to get that Mallard reaction; a chemical reaction between amino acids and sugars in the presence of heat above 285 degrees Fahrenheit. In simpler terms this is called “browning”.
Season the meat with salt.
Once the mixture has slightly browned, add the tomato paste, chili flakes and fennel seeds. Toast these ingredients the release the oils in the spices and cook off the metallic flavor in the tomato paste. When tomato paste is canned, it can often take on the flavors of its holding vessel. This is why it is essential to cook the tomato paste before adding any of the liquids.
Add your white wine. Scrape the bottom of the pot to extract the “Fond”, or brown bits that have stuck to the base. The liquid acts as a loosener and the scrapping motion as an abrasive. It is crucial to cook the wine until there is almost no liquid left. This will tell you that the alcohol is cooked off.
Add a cup of milk, stirring until the liquid has also evaporated and what is left is a deep brown “caramel”; Around 20 minutes. Add the second cup of milk and repeat. Stir vigorously or the milk solid will split and burn. Continue adding a cup of milk and stirring until the milk have evaporated and what’s left is a dark caramel colored sauce.
Once the milk caramel has been harvested, turn your heat down to extremely low and add the canned tomato, chicken stock, bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, parsley with stems, nutmeg, the rind from your block of parmesan and a few basil leaves and their stems. The color should be on the lighter side but will darken as the sauce cooks. I put the parmesan rind in here because it adds another dimension of umami to the sauce.
Simmer the sauce for a minimum for two and a half hours stirring every 30 or so minutes until the sauce is dark and viscus. As the sauce reduces, the flavors will intensify. The longer it simmers, the better the final sauce will be. If the sauce condenses and thickens too fast, add equals parts milk and chicken stock.
Once it is the desired depth of flavor, do a final seasoning check with Kosher salt, black pepper and grated parmesan cheese.
When you are ready for dinner, it is time to set up your station. Place your pot with the finished bolognese on the back-burner. On one of the front burners put a pot with salted water on high heat. On the other front burner, a frying pan. Have a silicon spatula at your disposal for stirring the pasta and bolognese.
You will be working with two or three portions at a time. If you are cooking for four roommates, to two portions at a time. If you are cooking for six, do three portions. First, cook 200-300g or pasta according to its packaging. I tend to cook my pasta minus one minute because I like al dente (“to the tooth” in Italian) and the pasta will cook longer once in the pan. The fresher the pasta, the shorter cook time. If you use homemade pasta, the final dinner process will only take around 12 minutes.
When there is two minutes left if your pasta cook, add a splash of olive oil and a nob of butter to your frying pan on medium high heat. Add two to three ladles of bolognese sauce to the pan along with a couple cracks of black pepper, grated parmesan, and a ladle of pasta water. The starch in the pasta water will help thicken the sauce and let it stick onto the pasta.
Add your pasta with the kitchen spider or thongs to the pan and toss for 30 seconds. If the sauce thickens too much, add more pasta water and cook for 15-30 more seconds.
You have to stir quick or else the sauce will burn. The bolognese should be emulsified and fully coating the pasta. A proper tossing motion consists of tilting the pan down and condensing the pasta in the top half of the pan and then flicking up and back towards your body at a rapid pace.
Divide the two or three portions of pasta into bowls using thongs if you want to be fancy or simply pour the pasta into its respective bowls. Top with torn basil and a final grating of parmesan. If you do choose the thongs plating method, I recommend cutting the basil in a chiffonade. Place each leaf on top of the next facing horizontal and roll like a cigar. Cut the roll of basil from one side to the other as thin as possible. The result will be long strands.
Repeat steps 12 through 16 for however many people you are cooking for. Remember, each round of steps counts for two to three portions.
To store the bolognese I like to use large quart containers. There are a few routs you can take. The first, store your bolognese in the fridge and make a quick pasta dinner for yourself or roommates another night of the week. It will last for around seven to ten days. Option two, double this recipe, freeze the bolognese and then heat it up whenever you are feeling in the mood for a hearty pasta dish. I would recommend this method. The sauce is already done so there is not much hands-on work at all. Further, I cannot stress enough how good this bolognese sauce is and so the more you make and freeze, the more times you can eat it through the semester without having to go through the whole sauce making process again. Option three, double the recipe, freeze half and keep the other half in the fridge.
If you want to go the extra mile, in step 16 add a small spoonful of Gochujang to the frying pan. Gochujang is a sweet, salty, spicy and savory fermented chili condiment made from chili powder (gochugaru), glutinous rice, fermented soybean powder, barley malt powder and salt. It provides an incredible umami punch to the bolognese. Gochujang is sometimes difficult to come across but any asian grocery store will have it. Trust me. If you can find it, USE IT.
