A Different Kind of Bolognese

Normally when cooking a bolognese sauce I do the simple recipe my mum taught me using tinned tomatoes, mince meat and vegetables. Tonight I tried doing Marcella Hazan's Bolognese from her book 'The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking'; I've been going through a fad of cooking Italian food and I purchased this book in aid of making an Italian meal for my friends, I really like her anecdotes at the start of the recipes and the tips and tricks on doing things better.

Bolognese Meat Sauce by Marcella Hazan (The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking)

The Recipe

2 tbsp vegetable Oil

45g butter

85g onion, chopped

3 sticks celery, chopped

4 medium carrots

350g ground beef chuck (i used minced lamb, I prefer the flavour)

250ml full-fat milk

whole nutmeg

250ml dry white wine

500g tinned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up with their juice

The Method

1. Put the oil, butter and chopped onion in a pot, turn the heat to medium and saute the onion until it becomes translucent. Add the chopped celery and carrot. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring the vegetables to coat them well.
2. Add the ground beef, a large pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper. Crumble the beef with a fork, stir well and cook until it has lost its red colour.
3. Add the milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely. Add a tiny grating - about an 1/8 tsp of nutmeg and stir.
4. Add the wine, let it simmer until it has evaporated, and then add them tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all of then ingredients well. When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through the surface. Cook uncovered for 3 hours or more stirring from time to time. Whilst the sauce is cooking you are likely to find that it begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat. To keep it from sticking, continue cooking adding 125ml water whenever necessary. At the end, however no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce. Taste and correct for salt.

I have to admit I have never cooked a sauce for over 3 hours before, so this was a first, when I started writing the post I was hoping all this time would bring a very satisfying result and as luck would have it the wait was worth it, the resulting sauce was sweet, delicious and will no doubt be made again soon. I have always wondered how to get the bolognese sweet without an acidic taste from the tomatoes and it turns out that's what the milk does, cuts down the acidity and the sheer length of cooking time aids in the sweetness of the sauce.

What also surprised me about this recipe was the lack of garlic - I put garlic in pretty much every thing and was extremely surprised to not see it in this recipe, the lack of garlic did not upset the beautiful flavour of this dish.