Lamb bolognese. |
I often make a bolognese with stew beef. It’s convenient and quick. Many recipes call for ground beef (i.e. hamburger), but I find that the meat has been ground too fine, leading to a somewhat gritty texture. So, instead, I throw the cubes of beef into the food processor, pulse, and then I have my chopped up meat for the sauce.[2] If I’m up for a little more work, I do it with lamb instead.
Consider the lamb neck: meat, fat, and connective tissue wrapped around a funny-shaped bone. It’s actually a bit of work to get the meat off these things. But, on the other hand, it’s just the sort of meat you want to send into a bolognese. You cut as much of the fat off as you can, then clean the bones of as much meat as you can (there’s always going to be some left connected, but I’ve saved the bones for stock[3]).
Lamb neck. Lots of knife work ahead. |
Many recipes for bolognese suggest starting out by rendering some pancetta and then sweating your vegetables in the pork fat. Mmmm. Sounds delicious. I don’t do that. I actually render my pancetta in a separate pan, saving the crispy meat and getting rid of the fat. I start things off with olive oil.
Brown and delicious. But you want to drain and discard that fat. |
I’ve seen recipes that call for sweating the vegetables before you cook the meat; this makes no sense to me. I do it after, using a trick I saw on a Jacques Pepin show: a little water in the pot helps the vegetables get to temperature without browning. Then from there, you finish the sweat. Once you’ve cooked the moisture out of the vegetables, they’re reading for the pot. This also picks up any of the leftover brown bits (flavor!) in the pan.
These need to be cooked before they go into the pot. |
Okay, here’s the part where I pretend to turn this into a recipe. I’ve been happiest with the sofritto (the veggies)[6] that weighs roughly the same as the meat. I aim for about 1.5 lbs. of meat, so that means 8 ounces each of carrot, celery, and onion, with a lot of room for fudging things (oh this onion is only 7 ounces, all of 9 ounces, that’s nice). What I’m pointing out here is that other than my obsessive weighing of things, I don’t actually measure anything else. It’s a couple of carrots.[7] About 6 stalks of celery. A medium onion.
About 1.5 lbs. of meat (beef or lamb)
8 ounces carrot, finely diced
8 ounces celery, finely diced
8 ounces onion, finely diced
4 ounces pancetta, finely diced
Olive oil
2 cups beef broth
1 cup red wine
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 can tomato paste 1 cup milk
Coarsely chop the meat in a food processor. Set the pancetta in a small skillet with some olive oil. Cook to render the fat and crisp the pancetta. Set a heavy pot over a low flame with the broth and wine.
Brown the meat in a large skillet with olive oil. When meat and pancetta are each brown, transfer to the broth, leaving behind as much fat as possible.
In the large skillet, sweat the vegetables. When they are softened and reduced in volume, add to the stock. Simmer for about three hours.
To finish the dish, add the pepper and nutmeg, mixing well. Add the tomato paste. Finally, add the milk to bring the sauce to the desired consistency, about a cup. Heat through and serve over pasta.
- If you’re disinclined to click the link, the short version is “way too much lemon in the dish.” ↩
- From time to time, I contemplate doing this by knife work, but that’s probably an idle fantasy. ↩
- The time to roast those bones and throw them into a stock pot is coming soon. ↩
- As with almost any wine-based dish, there is some dissension about the wine, with some sources calling for red and others for white (the same is true, for example, with coq au vin). In both cases, I am a partisan of using red wine. My preferred wine is a Sangiovese. (And for a coq au vin, a Bordeaux.) ↩
- Failing that, I suggest penne, since the sauce gets trapped inside. Pappardelle (really wide pasta) tends to be problematic; I find the sauce slides off it, just as it might with spaghetti. I once had a bolognese served on bucatini. Given that the restaurant was a short trip from Bologna, it’s hard to argue against it. (I’m now imagining someone from Bologna saying “Where was that? Pisa! Like they know what to do with bolognese in Pisa!”) ↩
- Indistinguishable in this dish from a French mirepoix. ↩
- Unless your carrots are massive, and I have seen (and used) half-pound carrots, or small. The actual number of carrots I’ve used ranges from one to four. Large stalks of celery weigh more than the small ones. And so forth. ↩
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