Year 2 begins with a classic: ragu

It may amaze you, reader, as it amazes me. I have been doing this blog for a full year. Isn't that amazing? For me, it was time to sit back and muse over the year, and to think about how my cooking has changed, and how my life has changed.

Honestly, what and HOW I cook hasn't changed that much, what HAS changed, I think is a sense of expansiveness about WHY I cook.

There is a lovely scene in that most wonderful of movies about dance, "The Red Shoes." An impresario is talking to Moira Shearer, the ballerina and he asks "why do you dance?" She answers with "why do you breathe?" His response is "Well, I must. In order to live." And he retorts with "And now you know why I dance."

I know, I know. Pre World War melodrama. And I lap it up like my cat does cream. But my approach to cooking has changed a bit. I recognized, over the year, that I cook because I care about my people, and I love them. Everyone wants to put forth their best for the people they love. I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't decorate. I can tell a bit of a joke, but really, with the exception of cooking, that's about all I can offer. You have to take this in connection with another, somewhat loaded bit of writing. There is a classic Seventh Day Adventist cookbook called "Ten Talents." It is a sexist rant, with a ton of recipes, many of which are good. In the middle of it, there is a poem by a woman talking about what she "could" have done, and it ends with "but when I see my sons' hungry eyes, I'm glad I make good apple pies." Well, take that line out of context, and there I am. Yes, I spend too much time in the kitchen. Yes, I am an obsessed foodie. And you know what? I'm not going back. I cook because I must. I cook because I love, and I cook because the love is returned.

We start year 2 with a classic that I had never made before: ragu bolognese. Now, this is one of those dishes where you can have VERY heated arguments. VERY VERY heated arguments. What is a "ragu?", for example, will get two or more Italians screaming at each other faster than arguing the merits of two soccer teams. What goes into a ragu will do the same thing. "Never use milk." "ALWAYS use milk" "No oil" "NO butter. " "Tomatoes have no place in it" "Tomatoes are indispensable" "Whatever you do, you MUST use pork." "Pork is too fatty."

It's all over the place. A few things are common, however. A true ragu is a slow cooked. In fact, VERY slow cooked "sauce," that is rich and filling. The garbage that you can buy in a jar at the supermarket, is not ragu.

When I decided to give it a try, I did some research. All venues seemed to point to Marcella Hazan as the place to start. The final "kick" that way came this weekend, when I was talking to my friend Ryan, the head chef at Barbuto restaurant. He had just put an incredible sausage ragu in front of us, and we were chatting. When I told him I was making my first one, he was stunned that I never had done it before. He asked what I was using, and I told him Marcella's recipe. He approved. In his words "if you're going to start somewhere, you may as well start at the best place."

If Ryan approves, then I'm going there.

I DID double Signora Hazan's recipe. I did this because when you cook things slowly, for a long period of time, they tend to dry out. It's hard to get a pot the right size for her original proportions. By doubling it, I was able to use a four quart Le Creuset pot. It worked beautifully.

Ragu is all about what Italian cooking is all about . Look at the ingredients: butter, olive oil, onions, salt, milk, white wine (let's not get started on whether or not you can use red!), carrots, celery, ground meat, canned tomatoes,nutmeg. You probably have all of these ingredients in your home already. So, you can make ragu.

Ah, but darling, you need the time for this. My ragu took six hours, and Ryan would say I undercooked it. His is a twelve hour sauce. I think that if you make larger quantities, you probably can cook it for longer. This is a good recipe though. I encourage you to decide to do it one weekend, and you won't regret it.

The proportions I'm going to give you will yield six cups of finished sauce. Marcella would say that this is 12 portions. I think that's too generous. This is such a rich sauce that a little goes a long way. I would say it's closer to sixteen. Whatever , when you use the sauce, use fresh pasta. It's a natural.

You start by chopping a cup of onions, and then a little more (say a cup and a third) of each of celery and carrots. I did the latter two in the food processor. You will also need 2 cups of white wine, 2 cups of milk, six tablespoons of butter, two tablespoons of oil, salt and the tiniest sprinkling of fresh ground nutmeg. And chopped meat. A pound and a half, or even a little more. The classic recipe uses only beef. A second classic recipe, which is what I used, uses beef and pork, in a 2:1 proportion. There are other variations.

Start by melting the butter with the oil. Add the onions, and cook them just until they lose their clear color. Then add the celery and carrots, and the meat. Sprinkle in a little salt, and stir this all together, at medium heat. You want to cook this until the meat loses the raw color. It won't take long. And that's good, because the next step WILL take long.

You add two cups of milk to this, and keep the heat low. Cook this until the milk has completely disappeared. This took at least 40 minutes in my prep. So be ready. You don't have to guard the pot, but you may need to come in and stir occasionally. When the milk is gone, add the wine. And again, cook until it disappears. This will take far less time.

While you're doing this cooking, open a big (28 or 35 ounce) can of tomatoes, and crush them with your hands. When the wine is gone, stir in the tomatoes. Stir the whole mass together, and then lower your heat to the lowest possible flame you can maintain on your stove. If you happen to have a heat disperser (just a big old piece of flat metal), but the pot on top of that. If you don't, you may want to take a big frying pan and use that instead. The whole point is to keep this mass cooking, but at the lowest, lowest possible heat. In Signora Hazan's words "it should barely bubble." You'll want to stir this every half hour or so, and keep up at it for at least three hours.

You should sample it as it goes along, and you will taste a miraculous transformation as the sauce becomes amalgamated. After about 2.5 hours, the fat in the meat will begin to come to the surface. DO NOT skim it out. Rather, stir it back into the meat. And cook it some more.

After three hours, you really have to decide: do you like it, or do you want to try some more? I let mine cook for another hour and a half, and kept my eye on it to make sure it didn't burn (if it does begin to crackle, add half a cup of water, but make sure all the water cooks off). Adjust salt along the way.

When you're done, you have something which, in my view, begs you to eat more, even as your stomach says "WAY TOO RICH" That's exactly what you want.

This stuff freezes really well, and it's one of those things that you can consider "money in the bank." Ragu is useful on pasta, you can use it in a lasagna, and if you really want to be crude, you can make the world's fanciest sloppy joes with it. It is SO BLOODY GOOD that you may find yourself wanting to experiment with different combinations of meat (I fully intend to do this), different cooking lengths, and other things (red wine verses white wine, for instance).

Treat yourself. It's well worth doing this, and saving some for dinner the next night, and freezing the rest. Save it for a special occasion, but keep in mind: TODAY is a special occasion. Be good to yourselves, miei amici.