Gnocchi with ragù

Bolognese sauce, known in Italy simply as ragù, is the quintessential pasta condiment – forget Fettuccine Alberto, a dish that is as Italian as chicken tikka masala is Indian.

There are countless ways to prepare a kickass ragù, but Carlo’s version is amongst the tastiest and easiest that we have ever tasted. All you need are fresh ingredients and time, since the secret of this dish is slow cooking.

INGREDIENTS

PREPARATION

PREPARE THE INGREDIENTS

• Wash and peel the carrot.
• Wash and chop the tomatoes into four parts; set them aside.
• Finely chop the carrot, celery, and onions.

PREPARE THE SAUCE

• Sauté the carrot, celery, and onions in a large pan until the onions take on a golden hue.
• Add the meat mince and brown it lightly.
• Add the wine, the oreganon and a sprinkling of chillies (the latter gradually to avoid making a vindaloo that nobody can swallow without getting third degree burns.)
• Place the chopped tomatoes in the pan.
• Cook on low heath for 60 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding water as needed.

COOK THE GNOCCHI

You can start this step when the sauce is almost ready as gnocchi take literally no time to cook.

• Fill a pot with water and bring to the boil.
• Add a pinch of salt.
• Pour your gnocchi into the boiling water; remember to drain them as soon as they come to the surface, something that happens in less than one minute, or there will be nothing left in the pot but cloudy water.

*Note*

Your tomatoes: Prepare this dish with the san marzano variety, or at least make sure that your tomatoes have a nice red colour and aren’t too small. Cherry tomatoes taste great but you must peel them – and that’s crazily time consuming – or else your sauce will be full of chewy skins.

If you don’t want any skins at all in your ragù, peel the san marzanos or use a ready made passata, ideally a plain “rustic” one that has tomato pieces and no added spices.

If you have chosen to use fresh tomatoes and despite your best intentions the sauce comes out a bit anemic, you can improve its colour by adding two tablespoons of tomato paste.

Your pasta: Gnocchi with ragù is a classic, but this sauce works very well with any porous pasta like trofie, as well as with short durum flour varieties like penne, rigatoni, maccheroni, and conchiglie – basically anything with nooks and crannies in which the sauce can nestle.

PAIR & SERVE

Pair with a full bodied red wine

• Excellent choices are Cabernet Savignon and Syrah, or one of the wines of northern Italy that are traditionally paired with red meats, such as Chianti and Barolo.
• If you prefer a lighter wine and want to be properly authentic go instead for Lambrusco, the sparkling red that originates from the same geographical area of your bolognese sauce.

Serve your dish

• Plate your gnocchi and cover them in lots of ragù. Don’t mix the sauce and the pasta together in a pan like you might do with a durum variety because hard these dumplings are not and thus they’ll disintegrate before you can give them a good stir.
• Serve with a grated hard cheese like parmigiano reggiano or grana padano. Pecorino romano is a decent alternative too.

ENJOY!