Ragu Bolognese
Hanging in the living room in Follina, Italy, 1988.
Dad in Venice, 1988.
Scenic overlook somewhere in Italy, 1988.
For a few lucky summers in my teens, my family had the opportunity to go to Europe. In 1988, we rented a house with friends in a little town called Follina, just outside of Venice. It was a funky house, comfortable enough, but definitely odd. It belonged to a Cambridge professor and she would rent it when she wasn’t using it. It had a hodgepodge of furniture and you had to walk through one of the bedrooms to get to the upstairs patio where everyone wanted to hang out. I remember after a long day of planes, trains & automobiles (well, maybe not trains) we arrived at the house, which was perched on a hill. Mom and Dad looked at each other and said, “looks like East Tennessee”. To be fair, East Tennessee *is* beautiful.
That was a fun summer with day trips by car and train, evening strolls into the village to eat the amazing porcini mushroom pasta that was in season, and lots of patio hanging with grappa sampling by the adults. Being 15, I was definitely curious to try some grappa out, but a quick sip ended that interest. It turns out grappa is fairly disgusting. One day trip took us to Vincenza where I spotted a pair of shoes in a window. They were perfectly hideous, kind of precursors to Doc Martens, clunky black shoes with a silver buckle. Pilgrim chic! For whatever reason, I didn’t buy them and when we returned home I had serious shoe FOMO. Somehow I talked my family into driving BACK to Vincenza another day and, boom, they were finally mine. Dad must’ve gotten into the grappa because I really can’t see him going for that now.
The next summer we went to Barcelona. Again, our accommodations were funky. I guess this is what let us travel at length. My family stayed in one room with four single beds and a bathroom shared with the other people on our floor for three weeks! Can you imagine? A 16 year old, 19 year old and two middle aged parents?! Accommodations aside, it was worth it. We got deeply into Gaudi architecture, I developed a crush on a bullfighter (Rafi de la Viño!), and we attempted to adjust to late night eating. My sister and I used to go to this cafe around 6pm and try to order food and they would roll their eyes. This is the same cafe where I tried to order an orange soda in my butchered Spanish. “Naran-yuh?”, “NArAnja??", “Nurundja?”. They brought me a beer.
Apparently, it was much cheaper to fly in and out of Paris than Barcelona, so that is what we did that summer. We flew into de Gaulle, rented a car, and hit the road heading South. First of all, the car was tiny. It was a little Fiat or something and didn’t fit my sister’s cello. Yes, we traveled every summer with her cello. In Italy the previous summer, we had to drive with the cello across our laps in the backseat. In France, the cello *sort of* fit in the trunk, all except the scroll, so we tied the trunk down and hoped for the best. One thing Dad didn’t factor into this plan was jetlag. He was exhausted. As we drove, he kept pulling over to the side of the road, smacking himself in the face and pouring water on his head. At some point, he admitted defeat and we pulled into a tiny French town to find a hotel. We found somewhere to stay and a place for dinner. Dad, who you can’t say isn’t adventurous, decided he must order the local sausage, Andouillette, not knowing anything about it. Unfortunately for him, Google didn’t exist because if it had he could have found this description in a couple of seconds: “It turns out, it's made of pig colon with duck meat. It smells like a mixture of poop and liver and blood sausage.” It was disgusting. And we were all dying just being in its presence. And Dad ate it because he’s polite.
We logged many miles (or kilometers!) in that little Fiat. Once, we were lost in Spain and driving like idiots, Mom navigating with the map in front of her face and Dad making erratic turns and stops. Apparently, we cut some dude off and he was not too happy about it. He made a quick hot lap around the block so that he could drive by us again and give us the finger, something he thought would greatly unnerve us. Well, it didn’t work, our entire family BURST OUT LAUGHING!! The look on that guy’s face. Priceless.
On our return drive to Paris, we passed a sign that said “The Nougat Capital of the World”. SCREEEEEECH to a STOP! Who wants Nougat?! Well, not Mom (she didn’t like nuts). And, not Elisabeth (she didn’t like sweets). But, Dad and I were all over it. Sugared up and back on the road, we finally made it to Paris in time for dinner in the city at what I want to say was Le Procope. (Honestly, I can’t remember, but it was one of the oldest restaurants in the city.) After dinner we strolled around and Dad, a former smoker who still loves smoking, had the idea that he could have a cigarette since he wasn’t in his home country. We agreed on the condition that we could also have one. Dad bought a pack of Gauloises and we all (even Mom!) smoked together on a bench on a bridge overlooking the Seine. No one asked me how I knew how to French inhale (hours of practice behind the Post Office in downtown Chapel Hill). But this awkward Reed family moment was documented by a passerby who we asked to take our photo. I’ll have to find it.
For today’s recipe, I’m sharing Mom’s Ragu Bolognese recipe (which is actually Marcella Hazan’s recipe). Dad shared a story with me about this dish. He and Mom were friends with the historian Eugene Genovese, a Sicilian-American from Brooklyn (he actually rented our garage apartment when he was a fellow at the National Humanities Center). Once, Mom invited Gene and his wife, Betsey, over for Bolognese. Mom had a new pasta maker and wanted to try this recipe. After they accepted, she reconsidered, knowing that their standards for Italian food were incredibly high. Well, she persevered and the dish was a huge success. Apparently, Gene was surprised that someone as Northern European as Mom could cook Italian food so well. Huzzah!
RAGU BOLOGNESE
Rules for Ragu:
The meat must be sauteed just barely long enough to lose its raw color. It must not brown or it will lose delicacy.
It must be cooked in milk before the tomatoes are added. This keeps the meat creamier and sweeter tasting.
It must cook at the merest simmer for a long, long time. The minimum is 3 ½ hours; 5 is better.
Serves 6—2 ¼ to 2 ½ cups
2 Tbsps chopped yellow onion
3 tbsps olive oil
3 tbsps butter
2 tbsps chopped celery
2 tbsps chopped carrot
¾ pound ground lean beef, preferably chuck.
Salt
1 cup dry white wine
½ cup milk
1/8 tsp. Nutmeg
2 cups canned Italian tomatoes, roughly chopped, with their juice
You need a deep, heavy pot (to keep the ragu from reducing too quickly). Put in the chopped onion, with all the oil and butter, and saute briefly over medium heat until just translucent. Add the celery and carrot and cook gently for 2 minutes.
Add the ground beef, crumbling it in the pot with a fork. Add 1 tsp. Salt, stir, and cook only until the meat has lost its raw, red color. Add the wine, turn the heat up to medium high, and cook, stirring occasionally, until all the wine has evaporated.
Turn the heat down to medium, add the milk and the nutmeg, and cook until the milk has evaporated. Stir frequently.
When the milk has evaporated, add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly. When the tomatoes have started to bubble, turn the heat down until the sauce cooks at the laziest simmer, just an occasional bubble. Cook, uncovered, for a minimum of 3 ½ to 4 hours, stirring occasionally. Tast and correct for salt. (If you cannot watch the sauce for such a long stretch, you can turn off the heat and resume cooking it later on. But do finish cooking it in one day.)
Great with tagliatelle. Good in lasagne or with tortellini or any macaroni.
May be kept in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or frozen. Reheat until it simmers for about 15 minutes before using.
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