Speaker: Hello and Welcome I am James, and today I am going to make Pasta that I learned from my brother-in-law Peppy, who is from -- Minneapolis-Naples. It's Pasta La Bolognaise. Now many of you know, Pasta from Bolognaise, the true Bolognaise Pasta is made without tomatoes, but since Peppy is from the south, and all Southern Italians adore tomatoes, we are going to make this Bolognaise with tomatoes. It is a very simple preparation, we have one can of San Marzano tomatoes, and I have just taken the can; it comes with the plum San Marzano tomatoes with a puree and I just crushed them by hand into this bowl. I have a pound of ground beef, it actually came from a local farm, and I have one chopped onion, not too finely chopped, just a simple dice and I have two carrots about this size.
I am just going to go ahead and quickly chop these guys up, and I am going to chop them not too finely, nice little pieces, and we will get this going with onions and a little bit of olive oil. Alright, so here is how we are going to go Bolognaise base going, I have got a medium sauce pan here, take a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. I have got going over medium high heat, and we are going to add our onions right into that, followed immediately by our carrots,, sauté these guys in the olive oil. Alright, so we are just going to stir these around for about 8 minutes, until they are nice and soft and translucent.
We don’t want to brown them, so I am going to add a little bit of salt to them to help them break down their sugar, and then once they are translucent, we will go ahead and add our meat, our tomatoes, and I will show you how we kind of put everything together and then we will lower the flame and cook it very slowly for about four hours. Now we are going to take our meat here, and we are just going to break it into pieces and just drop them in, and these will break down even more.
We want to give them like a little bit of a round shape, so they can get just slightly brown, and again, we are not going to caramelize these, we are just going to cook them for a few minutes and get the outside slightly brown before we add our tomato sauce and water. We will just let these go for probably five minutes, so that they are little bit brown, smell here is already incredible. So one thing you will notice that I am not adding any sort of herbs or any other spices to this dish. We are just going to use salt and pepper, it's really all about the meat and the slow cooked tomato sauce.
So our meat has been cooking for about 5 to 6 minutes, it's just slightly brown, now it's time to add our San Marzano tomato base. So I have my crushed tomatoes, and it's basically one whole can, 28 ounces, and this is enough to serve six to 12 people depending on whether it's served as a main course, or in Italian tradition, smaller sort of first or second course. I am just going to drop all of that in like that. I am going to fill my can of San Marzano tomatoes about halfway up with water, and that water is going to allow us to cook the sauce for a longer period of time over a very low flame. So they are going to lengthen the sauce; our beautiful Bolognaise is just come to a boil. So lower the heat, cover it, leave the cover just slightly ajar. You want to have it on the lowest –- almost the lowest possible flame.
So it's been about three hours, we are slowly cooking our Bolognaise here over a very low flame. Let's have a look at it, this is beautiful, I give it a quick stir. You can see it's reduced, the sauce is tightened. We have salt and peppered it along the way ,and I probably stirred it every 20 minutes or so. Now let's get out our pasta in the water. It's a very nice egg parpedelle, and so we are going to use that, cook it for a couple of minutes until it is nice and al dente. Alright, so I am going to add a little bit of salt to my boiling water here, couple of tablespoons. So let’s get our beautiful parpedelle into the water, and let that go for a couple of minutes. I have taken my Bolognaise off the heat. I am going to take a little bit of really good quality extra virgin olive oil, and I am just going to drizzle a tiny tiny bit in and then stir it in and off the heat.
So now I am just going to let that sit until we are ready to sauce our pasta. Alright, I get my parpedelle here, I am just going to put it right back into our pan, so I am going to give the Bolognaise a quick stir. Then take some of the sauce, this beautiful sauce, and just start to incorporate it, bring it all together. Again, we don’t want to over sauce this. Take a little more sauce here, and that should be about right. Mix that together, and there you have it, beautiful Bolognaise and we are ready to plate. Take some of the pasta, very delicate pasta indeed. A little bit of that to succulent meat. Now we are going to a little bit of aged parmesana reggiano. I always like to grate it to order. Now this is just going to be a wonderful, wonderful meal. Then at the very end, I take just a drizzling of really good extra virgin olive oil. I haven’t garnished with parsley or anything. I just want to keep it simple. It's all about the meat, and the noodle and the tomatoes. Let's give this guy a taste, it smells so good, It's delicious, thank you all.
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