In celebration of National Women’s Month, I figured I’d highlight the OG’s (original grandmas) of popularized cooking. Popularized cooking? I said what I said. We all grew up, hopefully, getting fed by a parent or other parental figure. If you’re my age and older, chances are this was your mother, aunt, sister, or grandmother. Women have held families together by saving money making struggle meals, ensuring their children are nourished to the best of their ability, instilling a sense of creativity in their children by taking risks on a new recipe, or just ensuring the family comes together at the table to eat a meal and keep the lines of communication open.
My fiance’s mother gifted me Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Classic Cooking last fall as I was finishing up my Culinary Ridealong series with the 2020 Giro d’Italia. I finally got to spend some time going through the book a few weeks ago and decided I would make one of the most OG dishes: a Sunday Sauce. Why do they call it a “Sunday Sauce”? Well, Sunday was the typical day Italian families would all come together to eat a big meal. All of the matriarch's kids would round up the grandbabies and swing by nonna’s house. Guess what nonna had been working on for hours? You’d soon know as you walk in the front door and the welcoming aroma of garlic and stewing tomatoes swiftly ran up your nose, chased by the sweet tinge of sweating onion and finally the last flavor you’d sense was some form of cooked meat (meatballs, sausage, pork, veal, beef) that would sit on the back of your tongue. It’s gotta be the best, first (and long-lasting), food memory of any kid with an Italian mother.
So, this past Sunday, I set out to make a nice Sunday Sauce and decided I would make the traditional pairing a ragù gets in Bologna (home of Bolognese), Pappardelle. Pappardelle is like the other traditional noodle of Bologna, Tagliatelle, except that it has fluted edges. These ragged-cut edges are great for helping hold onto the bits of meat and tomatoes from the sauce. As for Marcella, she has some strong feelings about food (what Italian mother doesn’t?). For instance on pasta extruders? “Awful devices that…[produce] a mucilaginous and totally contemptible product.” Black pasta? “deplorable.” She also has some smart pointers for beginners about timing. For instance, don’t drain your pasta and let it sit, you need to time everything out properly. Wait until the sauce is done, then drop your fresh pasta, drain, and toss it in the sauce immediately. Also, never use oil in your pasta, until the very end (plating the dish). There’s never any good reason to use oil in the boiling liquid.
This, being the second time I made pasta at home, I decided to get my girls involved in the process and we did all of the mixing and kneading by hand. I split the dough recipe in half and let them work on their own pasta; guiding them through the steps. They did great and we had a wonderful, memorable time together. We watched a great video about how to mix and knead your pasta dough from Marcella Hazan’s son and then we dispatched to the kitchen to make our own. Have fun and don’t panic. I have you covered with step-by-step instructions and photos below!
Bolognese Meat Sauce
adapted from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Marcella Hazan
This sauce takes a few hours. Do not rush the process. Wait for a day you have the time to make it. It’s unbelievably delicious. One thing that surprised me was that it called for white wine, instead of the red wine I always use. It worked out very well! This makes enough sauce for 1.5 lbs of pasta.
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup diced onion
2/3 cup each of diced celery and carrot
3/4 cup meatloaf mix (or a mix of ground chuck and pork)
1 cup whole milk
Nutmeg
1 cup dry white wine
28 oz can of imported Italian plum tomatoes
Parmigiano-reggiano
In a dutch oven (or other heavy bottomed pot), heat the oil, butter and onion over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the onion becomes translucent. Then, stir in the celery and carrot and cook for a few minutes.
Add in the meat in large chunks. Season with some kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper and stir to break up the meat. Once the mead has lost its pink, raw color, addin the milk, stirring occasionally, until it has fully evaporated.
Season with 12 fresh gratings of whole nutmeg. Then, add in the wine and allow it evaporate, stirring everything occasionally.
Meanwhile, open up the can of tomatoes and, using your hands, carefully break up the tomatoes (in the sauce so they don’t explode out of the can). Once the wine has evaporated, dump in the contents of the tomato can and give a good stir.
When the sauce begins to bubble, reduce the heat to low and simmer (extremely gently, only an occasional bubble should break the surface) uncovered for about 3 hours, stirring occasionally. After about 2 hours, you’ll probably need to add in some water. Do so ½-cup at a time. Taste the sauce, if it needs some heightening, stir in a pinch of salt. Towards the very end, if it needs any more liquid, just add ¼ cup as you don’t want a runny sauce.
When ready to serve, taste for any final seasoning needs. Toss with cooked pasta.
Pappardelle
adapted from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Marcella Hazan
2 cups 00 Flour (or AP flour)
4 eggs
Mound your flour on a work surface, preferably a large wooden board) and using your finger tips, make a bowl in the middle of the mound forming a tall ring of flour. Break the eggs into the well (middle of the circle) and beat the eggs until incorporated with a fork, about a minute.
Using the fork, start spilling some of the flour into the eggs and mix in more flour until it becomes “blobby”. Then, push about ½ cup of flour, from the surrounding ring, off to the side of your work surface and start mixing the eggs and flour together. If you need more flour, pull some back in from the side pile.
Use your hands to start working the dough. If tacky, add some flour until it no longer feels wet. Mound the dough into a rough ball. If you can put your finger into the middle of the dough and it doesn’t come out wet, you’re ready to move on. Use a bench scraper to remove any flour chunks and clean your hands.
With clean hands, start kneading the dough by placing finger tips from one hand on the middle of the dough and with your other hand, pull the top of the dough outward and upward, stretching it, and folding the top of the dough over your fingers (kind of like a mitten). Remove your fingers from the “mitt” and place your palm on top of the folded dough, leaving about a half-inch of the dough heap beneath your palm. Place your other hand on top of the other and with both hands push the dough slightly downward, but mostly away from your body. The dough should roll along with your palm motion. Repeat the mitten and push process. Then, turn the dough a ¼ turn and repeat the mitten and push process (2 times); turn the dough another ¼ turn and repeat the mitten and push process (2 times). Keep repeating this knead twice, turn; knead twice, turn process for about 5-8 minutes until the dough becomes smooth. Wrap the dough tightly in plastic and let it sit for 20 minutes.
Feels wet?: If at any time, especially early-on, the dough feels wet, just wipe a pinch of flour on the work surface and place the wet-feeling portion of dough on the flour and move forward with the kneading process.
Feels dry or is breaking?: Rub some olive oil on your hands and continue kneading to rehydrate the dough
Feels hard and won’t give under pressure?: Stop! Take some plastic wrap, or a damp dish towel, and place it on top of the dough and walk away for 10 minutes. Don’t even check on it. Just let it sit and relax. Then, after 10 minutes, begin kneading again until the dough ball is smooth.
Meanwhile, get your pasta roller (manual or mixer attachment) ready by ensuring it's on the lowest/widest roller setting. Place a large pot of water over high heat and bring to a boil. Preheat your oven to 250 degrees and place a large oven-safe bowl or platter in the oven to get it warm, if desired.
After the dough has rested, unwrap it. If it feels a little wet on the exterior, just do the kneading process a few times until the moisture has worked back into the dough.
Then, split the dough ball into four equal parts. Place plastic wrap, or a damp towel, on the dough balls you’re not working with.
Start stretching one dough ball out, into a disc, rotating the dough in your hands, similar to stretching out a pizza dough. You want to get the dough thin enough to just fit between your pasta roller. Run the stretched dough through the rollers on the lowest/widest setting and fold in the sides (in thirds), and run it through the rollers again (with the folded sides facing outward). Fold the stretched dough in half and run it through the rollers once more (with the folded side facing outward). Place the stretched dough onto clean kitchen towels and repeat this procedure with the remaining dough balls.
Adjust the rollers closer together, one notch at-a-time, and run each pasta sheet once through the rollers, one-after-the-other, until you reach your desired thickness/thinness. As you reach your last desired setting, the dough will have stretched into long sheets, so you should probably cut the dough in half to make the process manageable. Cut the final dough sheets in half once more. You don’t really want your noodles longer than 8-9”.
Using a fluted pasta wheel, cut the pasta sheets into one-inch-wide ribbons and stack them in a haphazard fashion so they don’t all stick together. If you don’t have a fluted wheel, just use a knife to cut ribbons...congrats, you just turned what would be pappardelle into tagliatelle! Magic!
Aggressively salt the boiling water with table salt and drop in the pasta when the water has returned to a boil. Cook the pasta for about 3 minutes. Drain and immediately toss the pasta in the sauce.
Serve and sprinkle with freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano and a good swirl of nice extra-virgin olive oil. Mangia!
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Copyright 2021, Brendan McCann, All Rights Reserved.
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