Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–glad you’re here!
Today, I’m sharing my version of Bolognese sauce, which after doing some research, I’m titling Bolognese Sauce a la Keri because it doesn’t fit neatly into a category, and I’m actually ok with that. Turns out, neither do I 😉
I have been having a hard time getting back into the swing of writing and publishing. The mountain of work that resulted from our road trip and the chaos that still consumes my house has gotten the better of me over the last couple of weeks. I’ve tamed what I can of the tigers of chaos and am trying hard to ignore the rest. Construction on the house is now done, but work continues on the project. I am hoping that by mid-October, I will have a functional house back, but…we’ll see.
But I think I have now convinced myself that I can get back to the things I really want to do, and that means getting back to the sauces of California Cuisine! I am finishing up tomato sauce which has been a pretty fun sauce to work with, for obvious reasons, and today, I’m sharing one of my favorite tomato sauce-based recipes: my recipe for Bolognese sauce.
Bolognese sauce is historically a meat-forward sauce inspired by the French “ragout” sauce. The sauce originally consisted of chunks of meat stewed for a long time in broth and it did not include tomatoes. By contrast to French ragout, which could include any and all kinds of meats and even fish, Bolognese sauce included only meats (and by at least some accounts only beef) which was simmered for hours with aromatics and broth and finished with cream and butter, to become a rich sauce. The Bolognese didn’t include tomatoes in the sauce until early in the 20th century and at least one source says that other meats besides beef were not used until somewhere around the 1950’s. I actually find this kind of hard to believe–I know from my own immigrant grandmother, that most immigrants freely substituted ingredients according to what they could get or afford. Thus, I doubt there would have been a lot of “standing on ceremony” regarding a particular type of meat–any beloved dish would have been made from whatever was available.
However, the Neapolitan version of the sauce got paired with tomatoes somewhere around the late 18th, early 19th century, but critically, only included large chunks of meat, that would be simmered throughout the day, resulting in tender, melt-in-you-mouth meat in a rich sauce. This tradition was brought to the United States and is generally thought to be the origins of the spaghetti and meatball we think of today.
I had no idea there was such a history of this beloved dish. I’m not sure my version does it justice. However, I am sure that every Italian family has their own version of Bolognese, or rather meat sauce, and my version is just that: my own version. It’s the one I like the best, but it doesn’t fit neatly into either the Bolognese version or the Neapolitan version. It fits into my version in my kitchen. It is tomato sauce forward and includes a secondary ingredient of my version of ragu. Together, they form what is probably more accurately referred to as a “meat sauce,” but…whatever. So I guess I’ll call it Bolognese Sauce a la Keri and have done with it 🙂
The Bolognese would only serve their ragu or Bolognese sauce with tagliatelle because it best holds up to the meat-forward accompaniment. My sauce can certainly be served with tagliatelle, but also plays perfectly well with rigatoni and is delightful with cascatelli pasta, as pictured, if you can get your hands on it.
Here is the link to my basic, slow-cooked tomato sauce. And here’s the link for my ragu sauce.
Buon Appetito!
Next up, is pizza sauce–until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
