The Sauce of Contention

If you want to start a fight online, just say that you add cream to pasta carbonara. If you want a full-on war online, just say anything about ragù Bolognese.

The Bolognese war erupts every two years or so, online. Pre-Internet, it used to break out every five years or so, in cookery magazines and weekend newspapers. The basis of the war is simple; a difference of opinion as to what is and what is not, ragù Bolognese. And people get very het up about it, accusing their opponents of bad faith or cultural appropriation, casting aspersions on people’s parentage, sexual preferences, and level of hygiene, arguing from history, common usage, Italian cultural tradition, and culinary purism. They cite Gualtiero Marchesi and Bartolomeo Scappi, Massimo Bottura and Gennaro Contaldo, and they even rope in non-Italians, like Julia Child, and Anthony Bourdain, and Ina Garten, the so-called ‘Barefoot Contessa’. Sometimes, they even cite an Australian, like Stefano de Pieri! It gets pretty tense, people!

The trouble with defining ragù Bolognese is that the term (like many others) has changed over time.

For example, if you look up ragù Bolognese in a nineteenth Century Italian cookbook, you would find a recipe for a ragù, composed of equal parts of veal mince, chopped pancetta, and chicken livers, fried with a sofrito, then braised with wine and a little passata, and thickened with bread, soaked in milk. And this type of ragù Bolognese, served on top of tagliatelle, and sprinkled with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, is still, to this day, served in high-end, traditional restaurants in the Centro Storico, the old central district of the city of Bologna.

However, in recent years, another kind of ragù Bolognese has become common in the city of Bologna. They serve this in restaurants, student diners and street stalls. This version is made with beef and fresh pork, sometimes minced, but often braised whole and shredded into rags, with sofrito, passata, and herbs.

As you can see, this modern version, looks a lot like American, Australian, or British Bolognese sauce, as is served in countless army messes, caffs, factory canteens, greasy spoon diners, homes, prisons, school cafeterias, and university dining halls. Suspiciously so, in fact.

It would seem that the good burghers of the city of Bologna have changed their minds a bit. So maybe, just maybe, this generation may see the last, few, dying skirmishes of the Bolognese war. And about time!

So, in order to avoid conflict, social ostracism, and possible pain and/or injury, I NEVER make ragù Bolognese. Instead, I make a meat-based ragù, which resembles ragù Bolognese in some respects, but has a different name, and thus can never be used to attack me or my definition of ragù Bolognese. Since I don’t have one.

So anyway. Here’s my recipe for …

Americana Sauce

Ingredients

* 2 onions, 12 cloves of garlic, 2 carrots, 3 celery ribs, 400g tin chopped tomatoes, ½ bunch fresh thyme, ½ bunch fresh oregano.

* 250g free-range beef mince, 250g free-range pork mince, 250g Italian sausage meat, good olive oil,

* Salt, pepper, 2 tsp season-all, 1 tbsp dried oregano, 1 tbsp dry mixed herbs, 1 tsp MSG, ½ tsp ground chipotle

* ½ cup red wine, 4 tbsp tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce.

First, do all of your cutting and prep. Peel the onions and garlic. Chop the onions into small dice and finely chop the garlic. Peel the carrots and chop both the carrots and celery into small dice. Core and chop the tomatoes into small pieces. Put onion, garlic, carrot, and celery aside in one bowl. Strip the thyme leaves from the sprigs, discard the stalks, and put the leaves aside in one bowl. Strip the oregano leaves from the stalks, discard the stalks, and put them aside with the thyme.

Mix the beef mince and the pork mince roughly in a large bowl. Add the sausage meat; if the sausage meat is in casings, cut the casings open, remove the meat from the casing, and discard the casings. Put the meat aside.

Mix a couple of teaspoons of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, the season-all, the dried oregano, the dry mixed herbs, the MSG, and the chipotle in a small bowl, and put the bowl aside.

Fry the meat in a heavy pan with a little oil, breaking it up and mixing it with a wooden spoon or bamboo spatula as it fries, until it looks well mixed and well browned. Add the bowl of dry seasonings, mix them in well, and fry the lot together for another fifteen minutes.

Add the onions, garlic, carrots, and celery to the same pan with a little more oil, and fry everything together, until the onion is transparent. Add the tomato paste, the wine, a dash or two of Worcestershire, and a few dashes of Tabasco and simmer the lot for another hour. Adjust the seasonings; it may need more salt, pepper, tomato paste, herbs, or anything else you like.

Send it to the table, with boiled spaghetti or boiled tagliatelle, and a bowl of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Serves eight to ten.

This is a great general-purpose pasta sauce. It’s good on toast too, or on baked potatoes, or on pancakes, or in jaffles or crêpes.