Here’s a little Liesl + Co. secret. I do all the company’s cooking.
One of the things I like to do on days when I can work from home (which is most days now in Madrid) is make a good Bolognese sauce. I spent today making my famous “All Day Bolognese,” and @admin asked me for my recipe.
I never use recipes; I cook by feel. So I wrote up for him what I do. I thought as long as it was done, I ought to share it here too. So here’s how to make the official Oliver + S All Day Bolognese.
A good Bolognese is all about meat that’s overbrowned and reducing everything down to concentrate flavors. So here we go.
Chop two large onions, five or six big carrots, five or six stalks of celery, and as much garlic as you want. Cook them in some olive oil until everything is soft and the onion is translucent. This is your sofrito.
While that is cooking, brown one pound of ground beef, one pound of ground pork, a pound of ground lamb, and a some pancetta or bacon. (You can use any mix of meats you like, but it’s important to get a mix and to use a lot of meat.) Add salt as you like. If you get a lot of grease as the fat renders drain it. Some of the time if you’re using lean meat any fat that renders will get reabsorbed, so you don’t need to. When everything is browned, let it cook some more. You want to slightly burn the bottom of what’s in the pot. Let the bottom of the meat char a bit, and get a lot of good brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pot. When you’ve got good burned meat on the bottom, add some beef stock and use it to scrape up the charred bits stuck to the pan. I usually use maybe a couple cups. You don’t want to drown the meat. You just want enough to allow you to deglaze the pan and give the meat something to boil in. Once you’ve gotten the pan deglazed, add the sofrito to the meat and stock and cook it at a simmer until the beef stock has reduced and the meat and sofrito are pretty dry.
At this point you’ll be about 75 minutes in.
Then add about as much white wine as you added of beef stock. Stir it and simmer it until the wine is reduced.
Once the meat and sofrito are almost dry, add about the same amount of milk and simmer until reduced again.
At this point, you’re probably about 2-2 1/2 hours in.
When it’s almost dry again, add two large cans of whole peeled plum tomatoes. Break up the tomatoes and start simmering. Simmer it for another 2 hours (at least). I usually go longer. And you can go much longer if you want. Just make sure there is enough liquid in the pot and let it simmer away for several hours while you do other things. Just check it every so often. You can have a can of crushed tomatoes on hand here if you want to add more sauce to reduce for longer.
During the last hour, you can season to taste: salt, pepper, oregano, basil, parsley, a touch of red pepper flakes. If the sauce is very red, you can add more milk at this point. You want it to be a light red, close to an orange color.
It’s done when the sauce is really thick. You don’t want a runny tomato sauce. You want to boil off most of the liquid in the tomatoes so you are left with a really thick meat sauce where the meats have absorbed all the flavors of the stock, wine, milk, and tomatoes.
Serve it over a thick pasta like a tagliatelli.
Since it take so long to make (although, to be honest, it’s mostly simmering time), I make a huge pot of it and then freeze it in meal-sized containers. That way, I can pull one out of the freezer, thaw it, cook some pasta, and have a quick easy meal later.
