Greg's ragù bolognese

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Ragù bolognese is a meat sauce much used with pasta—the typical dish is “spaghetti bolognese”. It's quite a complicated dish; here are some thoughts on making it.

Ingredients

Method

1. Coarsely chop the celery, carrot, onion and ham. This mixture is called battuto. I find it most convenient to mince the ingredients coarsely:

   

   Note the coarse disk in the mincer (more easily seen here).

   Melt the butter and fry the battuto in it over a low heat. The result is called soffritto.

2. Remove the soffritto from the pan, add the olive oil and fry the meat in it until lightly browned.
3. Add the wine and continue cooking until most of the wine has evaporated.

   It's almost impossible to avoid the meat sticking together. At the end of the time, it will probably look like this:

   

   I take this mixture and put it through the mincer again:

   

   It's very important here to use a coarse disk. If it's done more finely, the resultant texture is like shredded cardboard.

4. Put the meat, soffritto, stock and tomato paste into a pot, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, fry the whole chicken livers in butter, let them cool and chop as finely or coarsely as you prefer. Depending on the dish, you may then add it to the ragù or use them separately, in lasagne al forno for example.