Two Pasta Sauces

I hope you've been practising your pasta-making skills since my recent post. I promised you a couple of sauce recipes, and here are two that could not be more different. The great Bolognese, hours in the making and using minced beef and bacon (chicken liver is often an ingredient too); and Pesto, vegetarian and fast. A piacere.

Bolognese Sauce

Ingredients for 4-5 servings

2 1b ground beef
4 cans of chopped tomatoes
1 pack lightly smoked bacon rashers or pancetta, diced finely
5 cloves of garlic, crushed with a little salt
Optional: a handful of dried porcini mushrooms, presoaked
1 1/2 pts beef stock
Chopped parsley, 5 sage leaves, small thyme branch, small sprig rosemary (small sprig), good handful basil
Tube of tomato puree
3 large vidalia or other sweet onion, finely chopped
2 1/2 cups carrot, finely chopped
1/2 cup celery, finely chopped
Knob of butter
4-5 tbsps olive oil
Salt, pepper

Put oil and butter in a large pan and heat. Fry bacon for 5 minutes then add onion and fry gently for 5-10 minutes until translucent, but not brown.Add half of the tube of tomato puree and fry a few minutes more, stirring. Add garlic, fry for a minute, stirring, Now turn up the heat as you add the ground beef. Keep stirring to break up the meat and brown it. There should be no lumpy clusters of meat. Add carrots and celery, and fry a few minutes, then add thyme leaves, chopped rosemary and chopped sage. Keep stirring as you cook, and turn the heat down again.

Strain the mushrooms, reserving the soaking water; chop them and add to the pan. Add 1 cup of mushroom water, taking care to avoid the dregs which may contain grit. Let this boil down. Add a little salt (just a pinch if your bacon is salty). Now empty the 4 cans of chopped tomatoes into the pan. Stir well, then pour in enough of the beef stock to cover everything plus an inch over. Don't worry that it seems watery at this stage - the long cooking process will absorb the liquid. Bring to the boil, stirring from time to time so it doesn’t stick to bottom of the pan.

Reduce heat to a very, very low simmer (a suitable pot could be placed in a very low oven instead), half cover the pan and cook for 4-5 hours. Stir occasionally, checking that the sauce is not sticking to the pan or getting dry.  The end result will be a thick sauce bubbling through a thin layer of oil and tomato juice.

Have your drained (al dente! pasta) ready in a heated serving dish, mix in a knob of butter then pour your beautiful Bolognese sauce on top. Add chopped basil and parsley. Serve with freshly grated parmesan.

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Pesto Sauce

Ingredients for 4-5 servings

1 large bunch of basil, leaves only, washed, dried and torn by hand into shreds (do this at the last moment)

3 cloves of garlic

2/3 cup raw pine nuts

1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1/3 cup freshly grated Pecorino

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Toast the pine nuts gently until just golden. Mash them in a pestle and mortar with the garlic and salt, gradually incorporating the olive oil and shredded basil. Stir in the Parmesan. The pesto keeps well in a jar - pour some olive oil over the top to seal before closing the jar.

When you are ready to serve, stir the pesto and toss into the hot pasta. Have your guests grate Parmesan and black pepper at the table.

My local Italian includes some crispy little fried potatoes and green beans in the mix and I can't tell you how good this is.

Welsh Cakes

Welsh cakes, not to be confused with the black 'Welsh cake' that migrants took from Wales to Patagonia, have not travelled far from their homeland. But if you have a griddle there's no reason at all not to try your hand at these teatime treats, a great favorite with the kids, and they will keep fresh for at least a week.

Ingredients

3 cups all purpose flour

2 sticks butter

1 1/2 cups natural cane sugar

pinch salt

2 very large eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup currants (or currants and raisins mixed)

lemon and/or orange zest

Method

Mix dry ingredients and cut in butter. Stir in dried fruit and zest. Bind with egg, avoid over handling. Chill the dough for 30 minutes. Roll out 1/4" thick and cut in rounds.

Preheat a griddle on a medium heat. Have a jar of half sunflower oil, half melted butter ready. Grease the griddle lightly and place as many rounds as will fit on the surface. After a couple of minutes turn and cook another minute.

When the first batch is cooked place on a cooling rack. Keep them covered with a cloth. Proceed until you have used all the dough.

To serve sprinkle the Welsh cakes with a little powdered sugar.

Pasta Fatta in Casa

If you tried my Pizza Fatta in Casa recipe, now it's time to turn your hand to pasta. Yes, the dried stuff you get in the store is great, and no, you don't need to struggle trying to roll out 3-feet long spaghetti or cutting farfalle - little bows. But the almost slimy texture of freshly made tagliatelle with a classic Italian pasta sauce is hard to beat, and it makes all the difference to lasagne too, and the only way to make ravioli and tortellini, with your own delicious fillings. So are you ready?

Ingredients for tagliatelle for 6 people:

1 lb durum wheat flour

3 eggs

1 tsp salt 

about 4 tbsps water

The late, great British cookery writer, Elizabeth David, describes the process of making the dough in her "Italian Food". Pour flour in a mound on a board, make a well in the center and break in eggs. Add the salt and water. She then devotes a paragraph to the process of kneading and stretching the dough, counselling a 10-minuter period of intense exercise. Joyous as this process can be, I tend to use my Kitchen Aid with the dough hook fitted, and sit back and watch it do all the work.

After 5-10 minutes you should have a really sleek, malleable dough. Cut the dough in half. You can do the next bit manually, with your rolling pin. Elizabeth David counsels rolling up the thinly stretched dough like a jelly roll and cutting through this multiple times to obtain the noodles, but it is much more fun and the results are more uniform if you use a little Italian pasta machine - hand cranked will do fine, though mine has 'il motore' attached. Either roll out each piece of dough thinly then cut into long, 1/3" wide strips, or put through the machine press side a few times, then through the tagliatelle cutter.

Note: after you've made the pasta a couple of times you will recognize the correct texture. If it's too dry it will be difficult to manipulate, but if it's too wet it will stick to itself. After you cut the ribbons have some polenta flour ready to dust over them to help keep the strands separate. If you are not cooking them immediately toss them up every now and then in the flour to keep them from sticking.

Cook the pasta in a very large pan full of salted water until it is 'al dente'. This will take just five minutes or so, less time than dried pasta. Watch the pan for the pasta rising to the surface and then it is cooked.

Coming soon...a couple of sauce recipes fit for your pasta fatta in casa.