Mama..Bolognese sauce

[Mama Mangia]

I am so glad you enjoyed it!

: )

[jglass]

Well Mama we have had your sauce twice this month.
Jon really loves it.

[Mama Mangia]

Well Mama we have had your sauce twice this month.
Jon really loves it.

.............this makes Mama happy.......

[lucasantoro]

Hi all,

looking at some of Mama's post i'm a bit afraid of getting on her way , but i couldn't resist, hence sorry in advance Mama.

Even if I'm italian, i will not pretend i know the original old ancient recipe, because we italian never write anything and each family has his own tradition, nevertheless we always have scholars or curious passionates researching roots of everything , so i gave a look around to see and confirm my knowledge, and surprise i got a lot of infos pretty new to me.

Let me keep you waiting a bit more, i want to make a small digression coming from the heart, Bologna is a really beautiful city, and especially full of lovely people, "but" they are nice, altruist, with a great feeling for social responsibility (honestly a quite rare peculiarity in italy) and food lover... oh yeah great food lover!
Due to all this nice characteristic they can't be considered people from north of Italy, and especially they do not consider themselves north Italians. yes yes i know that looking on the map you might argue that "Bologna is in north of Italy", but to us italians, the lower half of italy is the south, and the upper half is split in two, the center where Roma, Firenze e Bologna are, and the north which we will not waste time on .

Coming back to the recipe i found that mine was someway accurate but considered a modern version, the ancient one had some differences mainly making it more greasy (and probably more tasty too).

So let's start
Ingredients:
5-600g of Tagliatelle (nobody in italy will use spaghetti, and especially someone from Bologna, Bologna is the homeland of egg pasta like tagliatelle and tortellini, while the south is homeland of dry pasta, like spaghetti, penne, and so many others)
300g of beef's diaphragm (in Bologna called "cartella di manzo", it's a muscle so it stands the long cooking time, but it's has as well a good percentage of fat, so nowdays it is often swapped with a less fat cut)
150g of bacon (pancetta, today we often omit it using 2 TBS of extra-virgin olive oil)
50g of butter
50g of onions
50g carrots
50g celery
200g milk (not all the recipes are listing milk, i never tried using it too)
5 tsp of tomato paste (this is sun dried tomatoes purée)
1 ladle of stock or hot water
1/2 glass of red wine (roughly 100g)

Preparation:
Chop finely onions, carrots and celery, chop the bacon and put in a pan, with gently heat and let the vegetables soft and the bacon release its flavour.
Raise the heat and add the grained meat (in old time the didn't grain, just chop it), when the meat is colored pour the wine and let the alcohol evaporate, then put the tomato paste and a ladle of broth to melt it, turn carefully, lower the heat, cover and let cook for about 2 hours adding milk (or stock or water if you don't want to use milk) when it gets too dry.

After, cook your pasta (al dente) and mix it with sauce, add few table spoon of parmiggiano (another gift of Bologna's region) and

Buon Appetito!
Pasta e Sfizi

[Mama Mangia]

Each family has their own way of making dishes - and they are all "originals" in their eyes. As you can see - mine was not a written recipe - just how I do it. I do find it hysterical at family gatherings when they fight over who has the "original" recipe!

[lucasantoro]

i totally agree with you, the recipe i knew was coming from my mother which i doubt she has ever seen Bologna that's why i enjoyed doing a bit of research and share it with you

i don't get too hysterical during the kind of fight you mention, because listening to all this variation some time you learn a good trick or principle, or an interesting variation (and if they don't argue about food, they will fight on another argument just less interesting ).

[chubbyalaskagriz]

It's funny- regional differences & peculiarities are present in any cuisine- but it appears that Italian cuisine has "fallen victim" to (or benefitted from?) more compound variances than perhaps any other cuisine that I know of... Italian food is loved the world over and in most circles- and I have observed that for every "classic" rendition of any particular dish- there are several more different versions of the same "classical" dish. While this can be confusing- I also find it liberating (and refreshing)!

[lucasantoro]

perhaps because in italy each kitchen is a region, well sometime the region includes the dining room too, but only if it is not too crowded

[chubbyalaskagriz]

RE: "perhaps because in italy each kitchen is a region, well sometime the region includes the dining room too, but only if it is not too crowded"

Ha! A lot like the U.S., Luca... Imagine a place w/ many regions and climates- made up of peoples themselves from many regions and climates! It's gets CRAZY sometimes! How wonderful to live in a place where so many different cuisines make up one's "native" cuisine! Your region has always been high on my list of places I'd like to experience...

[Mama Mangia]

I do know that each Italian kitchen is ORIGINAL, the RIGHT RECIPE, the WAY IT SHOULD BE DONE, etc.

Even in my own family - I've seen how many "variations" there are to the ORIGINAL recipe - I just laugh my butt off at them all.


And they do find something to bicker over - and any topic is fine!