Cookbook Challenge #8: Tell Your Nonna It’s Not As Good As Her Bolognese Sauce

Many, many years ago, I lived dangerously close to a Pier 1 Imports with a roommate who firmly believed in retail therapy. This was a time when Pier 1 had a clothing section chock-full of cool quirky finds and a somewhat less-curated overall selection, so you could browse the corners and find all kinds of fun stuff on the cheap. I still own a surprising number of those items (though not, alas, the clothing), including a cookbook called The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces.

This book was an absolute revelation to me. I was just starting to really explore food, and I had no idea that you could make something other than tomato sauce or cream sauce for pasta. Fettucine instead of spaghetti was comparatively wild. And recipes using metric – holy cow, I might as well be in Italy already. I felt exotic and worldly just reading it.

Someday I’d like to cook my way through this entire book. But since today is not that day, I’m going to settle for being grateful that Trader Joe’s is currently carrying fresh gluten-free pasta and that David has eased up a bit lately on his moratorium on dairy and nightshades. Clearly, Bolognese is called for.

Even the most cursory glance at the internet makes it clear that people take their Bolognese pretty damn seriously. “The ONLY authentic Bolognese!” “Make REAL Bolognese” “The Authentic Bolognese your Nonna used to make” “Yo mama makes Prince spaghetti” etc etc. There’s even an official version registered with the Bologna Chamber of Commerce. While even the most adamant stickler for tradition will admit that the sauce can have minor variations and still be considered authentic, there are a few common factors: meat dominates, with only a small amount of tomato concentrate; there are no herbs or garlic; the sauce starts with a sofrito of onion, celery, and carrot; and seasoning is limited to salt, pepper, and the occasional pinch of nutmeg. Cream is almost always added at the end. It cooks for hours and it tastes like love.

Whose sauce is the best?!?!

You might be wondering what could possibly compel me to spend that much time at the stove at the tail end of a 90-degree day. (I myself am wondering this right now, but I’m cranky and tired and hungry.) Anna and I went out to brunch recently and she ordered pasta Bolognese, which was good but not amazing and made me want to one-up them. She’s had a rough couple of weeks, and I thought that making one of her favorites from scratch would go a long way towards making her feel loved. We couldn’t decide what kind of carryout we wanted to get instead. Even though we spend a solid 6 hours doing heavy-duty yard work, I’d already bought the ingredients and it mostly tends itself on the stove and I could use the food processor for the veggies so it’s really not a lot of hands-on work…. And, mostly, BECAUSE I CAN. Because I can spend 2 ½ (yes, largely unattended) hours making this amazing, unctuous, luscious sauce and everybody in the house will eat it.

Note to self: A sauce this good deserves a really good bottle of wine. Properly I should be drinking Barolo or Barbaresco or Barbera or even Lambrusco. And if we had company I probably would, but instead I’m tackling a bottle of Chianti Classico from Trader Joe’s, because that seems like the kind of thing that you can sip on the deck admiring the results of your day’s labors without overthinking it. Also I’m trying to develop an appreciation for good-enough wines at a weeknight-friendly price point; while I don’t consider myself a wine snob by any stretch of the imagination (yes, it’s OK to only drink things you actually like), my wine rack is currently full of bottles I’d like to save for an occasion, which makes it harder to find something for a casual night in.

Taken from The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces by Diane Seed, with some editorial comments added. 

Tell Your Nonna It’s Not As Good As Hers: Bolognese Means Love

5 oz lean boneless pork (cheat and buy pre-ground if you have a good meat counter)
5 oz lean boneless beef (same)
2 Tbsp olive oil
6 Tbsp butter
1 medium onion, minced
1 carrot, minced
1 stalk celery, minced
4 oz bacon, finely chopped
2 oz fresh Italian sausage (this is about 1 link from the meat counter)
1 wineglass white wine (technically a standard restaurant pour is 5-6 oz. Use your judgement. Or lack thereof.)
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1 wineglass stock
Salt and black pepper
5 Tbsp heavy cream (don’t skip this)(I mean it. Don’t skip this. If you can’t wrap your head around it, you’re thinking of Neapolitan ragu and it’s completely different and someone’s Nonna will knife you over it)
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

If you didn’t buy pre-ground meat, mince it in a food processor. Heat the oil and 4 Tbsp butter in a pan, then add the minced onion, carrot, celery, and bacon. Cook gently for about 10 minutes.

Add the ground pork, beef, sausage, and wine. Cook gently for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally and making sure the meat is broken up. Add the tomato paste, diluted in the stock. Season to taste with salt and pepper and cook for 1 ½ hours.

Stir in the cream until is has been absorbed by the sauce, then set aside. Cook FRESH pasta according to package directions.

Return the sauce to the heat for a moment and add the remaining butter. Turn the pasta into a serving dish, make a well in the center, stir the sauce well, and pour it into the middle of the pasta. Set the bowl on the table in front of your admiring family/friends/guests and serve freshly grated Parmesan on the side.

It’s Too Damn Hot to Cook Anything Except This Pesto Pasta

I don’t want to go on record as saying that I hate summer, per se, but I’m not crazy about really hot, humid weather. For the record, I don’t really love winter either, but at least when it’s cold you can put more clothes on; the reverse is not always true. This “spring” in Michigan we had roughly 100 consecutive days of rain, followed by 90-degree humid horror. As a person who lives without air conditioning, mid-June is a bit early for this nonsense. I need to build up my tolerance to sun and heat gradually.

Best argument for trading in
the bottom-freezer refrigerator

Unfortunately, my family still expects to eat on days when it’s so hot that anything more vigorous than sitting up is exhausting, and there’s only so much carryout we can eat (plus we have to agree on what to get, and there’s the whole food-restriction thing, and dining out is expensive and time-consuming and gets old fast). So what’s a mom to do? Scrounge up this recipe that happens in the amount of time it takes to boil water and tastes like summer incarnate.

I highly recommend using fresh pasta here; aside from being delicious and feeling more like a “I’m making you a nice dinner” choice than dried pasta, it cooks super fast so your stove is on for less time. Every second counts here, people. I was very happy to discover fresh gluten-free fettucine at Trader Joe’s recently; while it had the same ludicrous price difference as every other GF item in the world, it wasn’t completely outrageous and made a world of difference in the finished dish.

From Cooking Light magazine, April 2010. I can’t even express how sad I am that this magazine closed.

Linguine with Arugula Pesto 

12 oz uncooked linguine
1 Tbsp pine nuts, toasted
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 cups loosely packed arugula
2 cups loosely packed basil
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
¾ tsp salt
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
6 Tbsp freshly grated pecorino Romano cheese (who are we kidding, you’re not going to measure this. Use as much as you want.)

Cook the pasta according to package instructions, omitting fat and salt. Drain, reserving ½ cup cooking liquid, and put in a serving bowl.

While the pasta cooks, put the nuts and garlic in a food processor and process until mixed. Add everything except the cheese and process until well combined.

Add the arugula mixture and reserved pasta cooking water to the pasta and toss well to coat. Serve with the cheese.