Tagliatelle Bolognese

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To continue - Tagliatelle Bolognese, as we all should know by now; not Spaghetti Bolognese: that combination is not a thing in Italy. The consistency of the sauce and the shape and texture of Spaghetti just don't go together: Tagliatelle is your only man, to paraphrase Flann O'Brian. The thing is, the sauce simply slides off of Spaghetti and anyway has the wrong mouth-feel against the sauce.

There are myriad versions of what a Ragu Bolognese should contain, and Here Be Dragons - I would imagine many fights have broken out about this most (apparently) basic of Italian sauces. Truth be told, I favour the very simplest of all, as favoured and promoted by the late, great Antonio Carluccio. I've never had a failure with this one: good ingredients and patience are all that's required. As with everything, I tend towards Occam's Razor, or KISS in the modern idiom. Never add when you can subtract.

Here, I will definitely upset an apple-cart or two here and say that vegetables other than onion (definitely no garlic!), offal, stock and any seasoning other than salt and pepper are completely surplus to requirements: the only necessary ingredients are butter, olive oil, ground pork, ground beef, chopped tomatoes, passata, tomato puree, a glass of dry white wine and of course - time. Note: two types of meat and three variants on the humble tomato! Sea-salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste are the only seasoning needed.

The last ingredient is the most critical: time. You can't knock out a proper Bolognese in ten minutes. Carluccio reckons a couple of hours in the pot, but mine always gets between four and six hours very slow cooking, and even then it tastes far better the next day. The thing is, the meat's the star of this sauce: it should taste of meat. The rest is the canvas on which the painting sits and should not dominate the main attraction. In my estimation at least, even the great Elizabeth David did this wonderful staple a disservice.

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