Tag: ragu

Ciao! I took a cooking class when I visited Bologna last summer and figured quarantine life is the perfect time to recreate some of the recipes I learned: fresh tagliatelle pasta and bolognese. The original recipe provided by the instructor calls for 100 grams of ground pork and 100 grams of ground beef in the bolognese, but I substituted with ground turkey since it’s what I had on hand. Shout out to Chef Luigi! (Yes – that is really his name lol).

Bolognese Ingredients:

• 1 lb of ground turkey
• 1 white onion
• 1 celery stalk
• 1 carrot stick or ~10 baby carrots (I matched the quantity of the celery)
• 3 garlic gloves (original recipe does not have garlic)
• 1 cup red wine (+ the rest of the bottle for drinking)
• 1 cup chicken broth (original recipe calls for beef broth)
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Step 1 – Prep:

1. Finely chop onions, celery, and carrots.
   1. I personally like the veggies finely chopped so that it’s indistinguishable in the sauce – keep it a mystery meat, y’know? Lol, jk, truthfully it’s just a texture preference for me. I didn’t cut it as finely as a I preferred this time because I was lazy but would definitely go finer next time.
2. Mince garlic.
   1. The instructor mentioned that garlic is not traditionally used in bolognese. I told him that I’d use it anyway when I re-make it at home, and he said he would do the same if he cooked it for himself. Glad to know Chef Luigi and I were on the same page about garlic and he’s not a vampire.

Step 2 – Cook:

1. Add olive oil and veggies to a cold pan and then turn on the heat to medium. That’s right folks – I said cold! Since the veggies are so finely chopped, the instructor advised us not to preheat the oil so that the veggies will not fry/burn.
   1. Veggies should also be swimming in olive oil as well, not drowning or hanging out in the shallow end. Hm, maybe I should have taken a photo to better exemplify this, but hope my metaphor is helpful lol.
2. Saute until onions look translucent, add ground turkey, turn up the heat to medium-high and cook through.
   1. Be sure to stir frequently so nothing sticks and burns.
3. Stir in a cup of red wine, once it comes to a boil, reduce the heat to low.
   1. Reminder to follow the rule of thumb to only cook with alcohol that you’d actually drink. If it’s crappy wine, it’ll make for a crappy dish, and you’ll just feel crappy. Don’t do that to yourself.
4. Cover with a lid and simmer for a minimum of 2 hours.
   1. Check the sauce and stir every 20 minutes or so to make sure it doesn’t burn.
   2. If liquids reduce, add broth as needed so it doesn’t burn. I ended up adding a about a cup of chicken broth after one hour.
   3. Chef Luigi suggests simmering for a minimum of 2 hours but encourages it for longer. “If you don’t cook it for 2 hours – it’s not bolognese!” I only cooked it at 2 hours because I was hungry and wanted to eat it lol.

While the bolognese sauce was cooking, I transitioned into pasta making.

Pasta Ingredients:

• 400 grams all purpose flour (original recipe calls for semolina)
• 4 large eggs
• Olive oil

Step 1 – Make Dough:

This started off as a major fail and I didn’t think I could recover from it, but managed to make it work afterall lol. Thank goodness for that, since eggs are hard to come by during this pandemic, I was relieved I didn’t just waste precious ingredients! The original recipe from Chef Luigi called for Semolina flour, I only had all purpose flour to work with. When I mixed everything together, the dough was super hard and not easy to work with. I was facetiming with my cousin and her best friend at the time, and was ridiculed for it looking like “dry ass pasta.” Jerks…they weren’t wrong though, but still lol. Anyways, after asking some friends for advice and googling how to fix the pasta dough, I ended up adding some olive oil to help make it more malleable. I read on this website that the consistency you want to go for is like playdough and thought that was a helpful comparison. I rolled the dough into a ball, wrapped it in seran wrap, and then put it in the fridge for 15 – 30 minutes.

Step 2 – Make Pasta:

I used the Marcato Pasta Machine. Started with level 1 on the machine, and worked through each level until reaching level 6 (level up! gamers – amirite?). Then ran it through the tagliatelle attachment to cut it into noodles. Let it hang dry for at least 15 minutes.

Step 3 – Cook Pasta:

Boil the pasta in salted water for 3 minutes. Water should be as salty as the ocean, Chef Luigi says adding oil in the water is not necessary because there’s not enough oil in the water to actually prevent it from sticking to one another.

Final Steps – Plate Food:

Plate pasta, add sauce, and top off with parmesan cheese if you have it. Prego!

If I were to do this again:

• Chop veggies more finely
• Add dried italian herbs for extra seasoning/flavor
• Cook longer than 2 hours to see if I can taste the difference
• Use ground beef/ground pork and beef broth as the original recipe calls for

Inspiration:

Chef Luigi’s cooking class.