Bolognese sauce (Italian: ragù alla bolognese, French: sauce bolognaise) is a meat-based sauce for pasta originating in Bologna, Italy. It is traditionally used to dress tagliatelle and is one of the two sauces used to prepare "lasagne alla Bolognese". Bolognese sauce is sometimes taken to be a tomato sauce, but many recipes have only a small amount of tomato concentrate.
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The sauce dates back at least to the 5th century. The little tomato paste present in the traditional recipes was added after the discovery of the New World.[1]
The traditional recipe, registered in 1982 by the Bolognese delegation of Accademia Italiana della Cucina, confines the ingredients to beef (skirt steak), pancetta, onions, carrot, celery (stalk), tomato paste, meat broth, red dry wine (not bubbling), milk, salt and pepper to taste.[2] However, many variations using other regional products do exist even in the Bolognese tradition. Some make use of chopped pork or pork sausage; chicken liver may be added along with the beef or veal for special occasions, and today many use both butter and olive oil for cooking the soffritto. Prosciutto, mortadella, or porcini mushrooms may be added to the ragù to further enrich the sauce. According to Marcella Hazan in "The Classic Italian Cookbook", the longer Ragù alla Bolognese cooks the better; a 5- or 6-hour simmer is not unusual.[3]
The people of Bologna traditionally serve their famous ragù with freshly made egg-pasta tagliatelle (tagliatelle alla bolognese) and their traditionally green lasagne. It should be noted that the Italians do not pair Ragù alla Bolognese with spaghetti. Wider shaped pasta are thought to hold up to the heavy sauce better.[1] In Italy, the pasta is stirred into the sauce to gather flavour rather than served with the ragù on top, as is common elsewhere.
On Sunday, 17 January 2010, 450 chefs in Italian restaurants in 50 countries cooked bolognese to an authentic recipe in order to promote Tagliatelle al ragù alla bolognese. International newspapers did not always reference the Accademia Italiana della Cucina recipe and usually published stock photographs of Spaghetti alla Bolognese.
The Accademia Italiana della Cucina (Italian Academy of Cuisine), registered the authentic recipe for Bolognese Ragù with the Bologna Chamber of Commerce on 17 October 1982 in the Palazzo della Mercanzia. The recipe below is reproduced from the Classic Bolognese Ragù according to the Accademia Italiana della Cucina
Ingredients
Procedure Cut the pancetta into little cubes and melt in a saucepan. Finely chop the soffritto of vegetables with the mezzaluna and leave to stew until soft. Next, add the ground beef and leave to gently come up to simmering point, stirring constantly until it splutters. Add the wine and tomato puree (cut with a little broth) and leave to simmer for around two hours. Add the milk little by little. Season with salt and pepper according to taste.
The classic recipe recommends the addition of 'a panna di cottura' of a litre of whole milk near the end of the cooking. This is whole milk reduced in a saucepan to at least half its volume.
Note that the above classic recipe includes neither garlic nor herbs.
Spaghetti alla bolognese, spaghetti bolognese, esparguete à bolonhesa or spaghetti bolognaise in a form popular outside of Italy consists of a meat sauce served on a bed of spaghetti, often with a good sprinkling of grated Parmigiano cheese. It consists of ground beef, tomato, onion, spices, possibly cream and additional vegetables such as carrots, celery, or parsnip. Although spaghetti alla bolognese is very popular outside of Italy, it never existed in Bologna.
In recent decades, the dish has become very popular in Australia, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway, especially among children. It is called spagetti med köttfärssås, in Swedish, spagetti ja jauhelihakastike, in Finnish, spaghetti med kødsovs in Danish, bolognai spagetti in Hungarian, and spaghetti og kjøttdeig in Norwegian, or simply bolognese. A version is popular in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term 'bolognese' is sometimes applied to a tomato-and-ground-beef sauce that bears little resemblance to the ragù served in Bologna.
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