Sugo della nonna

Sugo della nonna

I'm back! Sorry it took a while, but had a really busy couple of months with our newborn son. This new recipe is a tribute to my grandmother. I grew up with this sauce, she made it every week. I remember the Sunday lunch with fresh made tagliatelle or gnocchi. Hmmm the memories.

My grandmother made this with tomato passata from a can. But last September i made some passata myself with fresh San Marzano tomatoes. Of course i'll be using the fresh passata.

So what do you need to make this sauce:

• 500 gr of veal stew
• 2 Italian sausages
• clove of garlic
• 2 carrots
• 2 sticks of celery
• 1 onion (stick 3 cloves in the onion)
• some dried chili
• 2 liters of passata
• olive oil
• small cube of bacon fat

Lets start making the sauce... First you take a big pot and put it on high heat. Put in a good amount of olive oil and bacon fat, your clove of garlic and your dried chili. Let this simmer for a minute until the oil is really hot (make sure you don't burn your garlic!). Now it's time to put in your meat. Depending on the size of your pot, you can do it all at once, or a few pieces of meat at a time.

When you see that your meat is nicely colored, you add your passata, carrots, celery and onion. Let this simmer for at least 2 hours, season it with peper and salt and your sauce is ready to be served!

What i really like with this sauce is some fresh made tagliatelle and a good glass of red wine... Enjoy!

Sauce for lasagna (Vincisgrassi)

Sauce for lasagna

One of my favorite dishes is lasagna (in the Marche it's called Vincisgrassi), and specially the sauce in it. I actually make two sauces for my lasagna. One is a tomato based and the other one is a bechamel sauce. Naturally i don't put the same amount of both sauces in it. The bechamel is just to make the lasagna more creamier. I remember when my grandmother used to make it on a Sunday lunch... The whole house used to smell of it... Heavenly...

Now how do i make the tomato based sauce. Let's start with the ingredients:

• Olive oil
• bacon grease (just a small piece)
• 500 grams of minced meat (i use 50/50 pork/beef)
• 2 bottles (750 ml each) of tomato puree (aka pasata)
• 1 l of milk
• 1 carrot (chopped into fine pieces)
• 1 stem of celery (chopped into fine pieces)
• 1 onion (chopped into fine pieces)
• 1 marrowbone

So how do we start... You take a big pot on your stove and put in some olive oil and your bacon grease.

You heat it up until your bacon grease looks see through. Now it's time to put in your minced meat. You leave it to simmer. When your meat is nice and brown, you put in the carrot, onion, celery and your marrowbone. Leave it just to sweat a bit and then poor in your 2 bottles of tomato puree and the milk.

Bring this all to a boil and leave it on a low fire for at least 2 hours. After these 2 hours you season with salt and pepper (how much is up to yourself) and remove the marrowbone and bacon grease. Now the sauce is ready to be put in your lasagna.

Next time i'll show you how i make my bechamel sauce.

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