Bolognese sauce
Bolognese sauce (ragù alla bolognese in Italian, also known by its French name sauce bolognaise) is a meat-based sauce for pasta originating in Bologna, Italy. Bolognese sauce is sometimes taken to be a tomato sauce, but authentic recipes have only a small amount of tomato concentrate.
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[edit] Tradition and origins
The traditional recipe, registered in 1982 by the Bolognese delegation of Accademia Italiana della Cucina, confines the ingredients to beef, pancetta, onions, carrots, celery, tomato paste, meat broth, white wine, and milk or cream. However, different recipes, even in the Bolognese tradition, make use of chopped pork or pork sausage, while chicken, rabbit, or goose 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 of small amounts of celery, carrot and onion. Prosciutto, mortadella, or porcini fresh mushrooms when in season may be added to the ragù to further enrich the sauce. Milk is frequently used in the early stages of cooking to render the meat flavours more "delicate" but cream is very rare in the everyday recipe and only a very little would be used. 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.[1]
The people of Bologna traditionally serve their famous ragù with freshly made tagliatelle (tagliatelle alla bolognese) and their traditionally green lasagne.
[edit] International Day of Italian Cuisines (IDIC) Bolognese Day 2010
On Sunday 17th 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. In Italy, the pasta is stirred into the sauce to gather flavour rather than sat atop of the dish.
[edit] Spaghetti alla Bolognese
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 with a good sprinkling of grated Parmigiano cheese. Although Spaghetti alla Bolognese is very popular outside of Italy it never existed in Bologna, where ragù is served always with the local egg pastas tagliatelle or lasagne. Spaghetti is a durum wheat pasta from Naples, and the Naples Ragù of a meat flavoured thick tomato sauce clings much better to slippery spaghetti than Bologna's ground beef ragù.
In recent decades, the dish has become very popular in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. Called spagetti och köttfärssås, in Swedish, spagettia ja jauhelihakastiketta, in Finnish, spaghetti og kødsovs in Danish, and spaghetti og kjøttdeig in Norwegian, especially among children. A version is popular in the United Kingdom (where it is colloquially abbreviated to spag bol). In the United States also the term 'bolognese' is applied to a tomato-and-ground-beef sauce that bears little resemblance to ragù served in Bologna.
Due to a 1960s advertising campaign by Latina, a popular sauce brand in Australia and New Zealand, it has become a custom to serve Bolognese on Tuesday nights as a family meal. While the advertisements have been off-air for decades, the tradition remains strong.[citation needed]
[edit] Classic Bolognese Ragù according the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, 1982
The Accademia Italiana della Cucina (Italian Academy of Cuisine), witnessed the authentic recipe for Bolognese Ragù being registered with the Bologna Chamber of Commerce on the 17th October 1982 in in the Palazzo della Mercanzia. The recipe below is reproduced from the Classic Bolognese Ragù according the Accademia Italiana della Cucina
Ingredients
- 300 g beef cartella (thin skirt)
- 150 g pancetta, dried
- 50 g carrot
- 50 g celery stalk
- 50 g onion
- 5 spoons tomato sauce or 20 g triple tomato extract
- 1 cup (250 mL) whole milk
- Half cup white or red wine, dry and not frizzante
- Salt and pepper, to taste.
Procedure The pancetta, cut into little cubes and chopped with a mezzaluna chopping knife, is melted in a saucepan; the vegetables, once again well chopped with the mezzaluna, are then added and everything is left to stew softly. Next the ground beef is added and is left on the stovetop, while being stirred constantly, until it sputters. The wine and the tomato cut with a little broth are added and everything left to simmer for around two hours, adding little by little the milk and adjusting the salt and black pepper. Optional but advisable is the addition of the panna di cottura of a litre of whole milk at the end of the cooking.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Hazan, Marcella The Classic Italian Cookbook Knopf. ISBN 0-394-40510-2
[edit] Further reading
- Kaspar, Lynne Rossetto (1st Edition: September 21, 1992) The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food, Morrow Cookbooks. ISBN 0-688-08963-1.
- Hazen, Marcella The Classic Italian Cookbook Knopf. ISBN 0-394-40510-2
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pasta Bolognese |
- Ragu Bolognese recipe from Mario Batali and Gourmet Magazine
- US "Spaghetti Bolognese" Recipe
- http://www.accademiaitalianacucina.it/en_index.php
- Telegraph Article on Bolognese Day
- Times Online Article on Bolognese Day
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