RECIPE: The Bolognese

Is it possible to improve upon Ina Garten's iconic "Weeknight Bolognese?"

It started with Ina Garten’s Weeknight Bolognese.  My friend Kate had informed me that this recipe was a game changer, and she was right.  Ina’s recipe was an instant hit with not just me, but my pasta-loving boyfriend Dominique, who hoovered up his serving faster than I could say “How easy is that?”  Incidentally, that’s also the name of the Barefoot Contessa cookbook from which the recipe originates.

Dom, it turns out is a pasta fiend.  Put a bowl in front of him, and he’ll not only eat it for dinner, but he’ll go back for breakfast and lunch the next day too.  This is not an exaggeration.   He hit pay dirt in 2020 when the pandemic forced us indoors and away from the world.  Like so many other people around the globe, we needed to make our food stretch.  Hence, pasta.   And lots of it.

Suddenly the Weeknight Bolognese was in high rotation, but so were other excellent recipes from Colu Henry (Back Pocket Pasta), Joshua McFadden (Six Seasons), and even Ina Garten herself.  It was a great windfall for Dom, and honestly, me too.  I had spent years avoiding carbs — as will happen when you’re a gay man living in Los Angeles — and the pandemic allowed me to focus on the things that made me happy, namely pasta.

With the Weeknight Bolognese now in high rotation, I felt emboldened to experiment, which is not something I often do. You see, if I cook something rarely, I’m less inclined to play with it — I’m too afraid of messing it up.  But if I’m tackling the same dish every ten days, I’m much less precious about it.  And that’s what happened with the Bolognese (if I were Molly Baz, I’d probably call it The Bolo, but I won’t.  I don’t think.  Okay, I might — just as an homage to the greatest male stripper to grace Bravo television).

Bolo, as seen on The Real Housewives of Atlanta

The point is I started to experiment with The Bolo (okay, I’ll stop).  What if I used sausage instead of sirloin?  Maybe I could build a flavor base out of aromatics just the way Colu Henry does in Back Pocket Pasta?  And what if we add fennel too?  The end result:  a bolognese that is truly undeniable.

I’ve made the bolognese so many times, I actually know it by heart. It’s no longer a recipe but a series of instincts. This is my old Italian nonna moment, and it should be noted that while I am often mistaken for Italian, I am merely a nice Jewish boy. And thus, I can’t authoritatively say if this dish is a real bolognese, but I can authoritatively state it’s delicious.

So, here goes.  My very detailed recipe for The Bolognese, or, if you want to be hip, The Bolo¹.

---

The Bolognese

Ingredients:

2 stalks of celery

1 fennel bulb

1-3 carrots, depending on your mood and the carrot size.

1 onion (yellow, white, whatever — knock yourself out)

4-6 garlic cloves, depending on taste (you should aspire for 6 though)

Olive oil

1 lbs of Italian sausage bulk or out of its casings – hot or sweet: your choice

1 tbs fennel seeds

1 ¼  cups of dry red wine

Kosher salt and pepper, to taste

1 tbs dried oregano (sometimes I like to do half oregano, half “Italian Seasonings”)

1 tsp red pepper flakes

1 28oz can of crushed tomatoes (you can do diced or whole tomatoes, but it won’t be the same)

2 tbs tomato paste

1 lb short pasta — I often use rigatoni, but for a real thrill, go for wagon wheels

¼ - ½ tsp ground nutmeg

¼- ½  cup fresh basil (feel free to tsp of dried instead)

¼ cup heavy cream (whole milk, Lactaid, and even almond milk are fine here too)

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley, optional

The Steps:

1.      Prep your vegetables:  Peel your carrots and onions and garlic cloves.  Slice the tops off your fennel and core it if you want (you don’t have to).  Slice all the big veggies — carrots, celery, fennel — into chunks that are all about the same size.  Throw them all in a food processor (batches if necessary) and pulse until everything is all chopped up into small pieces.  It may get a bit wet because of the onion.  That’s fine.

a.     A few comments: the carrots will process slower than the other veggies; so make sure the carrot chunks are not that big.  Otherwise, everything else will be in tiny pieces while the carrots may have an annoying amount of biggish slices.

b.     You can mince the veggies by hand, and there’s probably a scientific reason why it’s actually better, but I am all for a food processor shortcut.

2.     Start the sauce: Put a tall, wide pot on the stove over medium heat.  I like a big Dutch oven for this, but you follow your heart.  Just don’t do a skillet.  I’ve tried it – you will be annoyed.  Coat the bottom of your pot with olive oil.  I believe the scientific amount would be “1 or 2 glugs.”  When the oil is hot, add your veggie mix and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally - about 10-12 minutes.

a.     Keep an eye on the heat.  If things are cooking too fast, lower it.  If it’s taking painstakingly long, raise it a little.  Also, this is a great time to remove sausage from the casings if necessary.

3.     After about 10-12 minutes, most of the liquid will have cooked out of the veggies, and everything will be tender but not wet.  The vegetables will begin leaving a brown crud (or fond) on the pan, and if you scrape the brown stuff off with your wooden spoon, it will return very quickly.  That’s when I move forward.

4.     Add the sausage and the fennel seed.  Smash the sausage with the back of your spoon (and the front and sides! Go nuts) until it breaks into little pieces and co-mingles nicely with the vegetables.  If you want more fennel, add it!  The sausage can take a lot.  Cook the sausage, stirring occasionally until it’s no longer pink in the middle and starting to brown.  This will take about another 10 minutes.  If it’s cooked through but still gray, let the sausage sit undisturbed for about two minutes so it develops a brown crust.

a.     As usual, this may take shorter or longer than my timing estimate.  It’s going to come down to your pot, your burner, and your eyes.  Don’t be afraid to increase the flame if it’s going too slowly by 8 minutes in.

5.     Add the oregano (or Italian seasonings) and red pepper, and stir everything around.  Hopefully by now the mixture is starting to leave more brown gunk on the pan (the gunk leads to flavor.  We are very pro-gunk).  Add the wine and stir, scraping up aforementioned gunk, until most of the wine has evaporated out.

a.     I honestly don’t measure my wine anymore.  I just pour in enough so that the meat mixture is somewhat surrounded — kind of like how far up a puddle will come on a sneaker sole.  Does that make sense? Should I not be talking about puddles in a recipe?

6.     At this point your meat mixture should be purplish and ever so slightly saucy.  I like to create a small well in the meat and add the tomato paste into the center.  Sautee the tomato paste with a wooden spoon until it softens and liquifies a bit.  Now add the crushed tomatoes and stir everything together.  Lastly, add salt and pepper.  I go for a heavy pinch – about a tablespoon or so.  You’ll have a chance later to salt it more.  As for pepper, just grind as much in as you feel is fun.  This recipe will not live or die in this pepper moment.  Bring the mixture to a chunky boil and then lower to a simmer over low heat.

7.     Start the pasta: Fill another pot up with water.  Set over high heat and bring to a boil.  This will take a little while, and that’s OKAY.  In fact, we are going to use the water boiling time to let the sauce simmer and thicken (give it a stir here and there).

a.     This downtime is a great opportunity to grate your parmesan, chop your basil and parsley, and maybe clean a dish.

8.     When the water finally comes to a boil, salt it.  Be generous.  More generous than you think you’re being.  Add your pasta and cook until al dente, as per the instructions on the box.  Usually it’s about 10 min.

a.     I put in about two handfuls of salt, which sounds crazy, but honestly, it’s not.

9.     Finish the sauce: While the pasta cooks, it’s time to finish off the sauce.  Raise the tomato mixture temp to medium and add the nutmeg, the basil, the dairy, and another ¼ cup of wine (aka a lil’ glug) and stir.  Taste for seasoning, adding more salt and pepper as needed.

a.     Don’t confuse “almost there” with “there” for the seasoning.  A lot of times the sauce is nicely seasoned at this point due to the sausage and earlier salting, but it may trend sweet due to the carrots.  One more healthy pinch of salt helps balance it out.  Don’t overdo it though because we still have…

10.  Parmesan!  Add that beautiful parmesan into the sauce and stir it up.  Once it’s all melted and incorporated, do another check for seasoning.  It should taste absurdly wonderful.

11.  When the pasta is done, drain it (no need to be thorough, a little pasta water never hurt) and add it to the pot of sauce.  Mix, mix, mix and then do one final taste for seasoning.  Add more parm or salt if necessary. You can also scoop a little pasta water if the sauce is too thick.  Lastly, assault the pot with a handful of chopped parsley and some more grated parm if you want.  You did it!  Now go serve it!

---

This whole process should take about 80 minutes from start to end.  A little longer than Ina’s original recipe but so, so worth it.

1. Mere hours after I finished typing this post, Molly Baz posted a bolognese recipe on her Instagram and literally called it “white bean bolo.” I hereby retire use of the term Bolo, partially because Molly beat me to the punch and also because, let’s be honest, no one wants me to call it Bolo.