A friend in deed

For purposes of this discussion the man above, known to many of you as “my friend Joe,” shall heretofore be referred to as San Giuseppe.

That’s right, the man’s a freaking saint. And I can prove it.

He just traveled all the way from Cold Spring, New York, to Bologna, Italy, just to do me a favor. If you’re counting that’s roughly 4,100 miles—each way.

Why would a man do such a thing?

Simple. So that I could shut up already and start producing a pasta shape that I have been yelling about—very often in his earshot—for nearly two years now.

You see, the last time I was in Bologna I came into possession of this totally awesome solid brass pasta extruder known as a torchietto.



Here is the torchietto right here, equipped with the spaghetti die that it came with.

Nice, huh? And the spaghetti that it makes ain’t too shabby either.

What I neglected to put hands on when picking up the torchietto in Bologna was an accompanying die for making passatelli. Passatelli is a simple pasta, in the shape of spaghetti only thicker in width and much shorter in length. It’s not made with flour but with breadcrumbs, egg and cheese. Traditionally it’s served very simply in a clear broth, or brodo. 

Like so. 

This, in fact, is a truly authentic passatelli en brodo, the one that I very much enjoyed at Ristorante Cesarina on Via Santo Stefano in Bologna the last time I was there. 

I love passatelli en brodo. And really want to make the stuff right here in my kitchen. 

But I couldn’t. Not without the solid brass die that I had so knuckeheadedly left behind at the ancient shop where the torchietto was discovered and purchased.

When he heard about this my friend Joe—at this point he had not yet achieved sainthood—was as ticked off about my oversight as I was. Not so much because he craved a taste of homemade passatelli but because, well, Joe is even more obsessive about getting things right the first time than I am.

“How could you even think of leaving that place without the passatelli die in hand?” he squawked. “You make me crazy sometimes, you know that.”

It is sometimes said that having friends who speak their mind freely is a blessing.

I suppose.

Only moments ago I received this photograph via email. It’s the passatelli die that San Giuseppe just picked up for me in Bologna. 

“I’m overnighting it as soon as I get home next week,” he wrote. “If I had any trust in the Italian postal system, believe me, I’d have overnighted it from here already.”

I informed my recently beatified friend that overnighting the die would not be necessary, that I had waited this long for the die and surely could wait a bit longer. 

“You’re already eating passatelli in your head,” he shot back, knowing how closely I had been following his movements around Italy these past weeks, anticipating the exact date and time that the die and he would come together. “No reason to torture you by making you wait any longer.” 

And so there you have it. Soon a package will arrive and in probably no time at all I’ll be at work preparing what will hopefully be a successful passatelli en brodo—in my own kitchen.


Thanks to my very dear friend Saint Joe.


Stay tuned.

Ragu alla Bolognese

Pay attention because this is important: It only looks like a pasta course you have seen me prepare here a couple hundred times before.

But it isn’t. Until a few weeks ago I didn’t even know such a thing as this existed. I swear.

What you have here is the official, government-sanctioned recipe for Ragu alla Bolognese, commonly referred to as Bolognese Sauce. The recipe was “notarized and deposited” in the Chamber of Commerce of the City of Bologna on October 17th, 1982, by “solemn decree” of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina (the Italian Academy of Cuisine).  

Who knew?

Turns out, not many. My friend Biancamaria is from Bologna and she never heard of any “official” Ragu alla Bolognese recipe. Which is saying something because, as she tells me, “when I was a child every Sunday we had ragu.” 

I didn’t catch up with Bianca on a recent visit to Bologna (she’s living in the English countryside now with Massimo and their daughter Delfina) but on at least four occasions I got to sample authentic Ragu alla Bolognese. And it’s nothing like many of the so-called Bolognese sauces you’ll come across elsewhere. 

For starters, a lot of “Bolognese” sauces are basically tomato sauces that have meat in them. A real Bolognese is a meat sauce that has only a touch of tomato. The earliest examples of Ragu alla Bolognese didn’t include any tomato at all. And forget about using pasta shapes like spaghetti; nobody in Bologna would even think of pairing their ancient ragu with anything but a flat, fresh pasta such as tagliatelle. Just ask for tagliatelle at a restaurant in Bologna and watch what you get. Same thing if you ask only for ragu.

Anyway, and as you no doubt have surmised, I just had to give the “notorized” recipe a shot. I’ve reprinted it in its entirety below, but here is the link as well. Just a note about the ingredients: My quantities are not exactly those shown in the recipe. I have, however, made the necessary adjustments to follow the recipe as closely as possible.



Start out by finely chopping equal amounts of onion, carrot and celery. Here we’ve got just under 3 ounces of each.



Finely dice around 1/2 lb. of pancetta and then brown in a Dutch oven that’s large enough to accommodate all the recipe’s ingredients.



Add the onion, carrot and celery to the browned pancetta and saute until the vegetables are nicely softened.



Okay, about the meat. The recipe calls for ground skirt steak, but skirt wasn’t available and so I went with tender hanger steak instead. Rather than grind the meat I decided to very finely dice it, as I have seen both approaches taken. This is one pound of beef.



Once the vegetables have softened add the beef and allow it to brown.



Then add 1/2 cup of wine (I went with white but red is also approved) and, here’s the tricky part, a small amount of tomato. The recipe calls for either tomato sauce or highly concentrated tomato paste. I made a small quantity of very simple tomato sauce and added around a cup here. I also added a little homemade beef stock, as this is also mentioned in the recipe.



At this point things are supposed to simmer for two hours, at a low flame. But don’t expect to make yourself scarce for these couple hours. Because little by little you’ll need to stir in very small amounts of whole milk, at fairly regular intervals, until you’ve gone through one full cup.



Speaking of milk, an “optional but advisable” addition to the sanctioned recipe is panna di cottura. Basically that means whole milk that has been slowly simmered to half its original volume. That’s around 1 1/3 quarts of milk you see in the pot there. While the sauce was slowly simmering so was the milk, until it was halved. 

After two hours of simmering (and only a slight addition of salt and pepper to taste) this is what the ragu looked like. But we aren’t finished yet.



The next step is to slowly stir in the panna di cottura (the reduced whole milk). Since this step was “advisable” I decided to throw caution to the wind and use up all the milk.

I know, this looks awfully cream sauce-like, doesn’t it. I was nervous too.

But it turns out I didn’t need to be. This was a damned fine ragu that I’ll be working on until it tastes like I’m back in Bologna. 

If that doesn’t work, there’s always Alitalia.

The Official Ragu alla Bolognese
Reprinted from Accademia Italiana della Cucina. 

Ingredients

300 gr. beef cartella (thin skirt)
150 gr. pancetta, dried
50 gr. carrot
50 gr. celery stalk
50 gr. onion
5 spoons tomato sauce or 20 gr. triple tomato extract
1 cup whole milk
Half cup white or red wine, dry and not frizzante
Salt and pepper, to taste.

Procedure

The pancetta, cut into little cubes and chopped with a mezzaluna chopping knife, is melted in a saucepan; the vegetables, once again well chopped with the mezzaluna, are then added and everything is left to stew softly. Next the ground beef is added and is left on the stovetop, while being stirred constantly, until it sputters. The wine and the tomato cut with a little broth are added and everything left to simmer for around two hours, adding little by little the milk and adjusting the salt and black pepper. Optional but advisable is the addition of the panna di cottura of a litre of whole milk at the end of the cooking.