One of the most popular dishes in France is spaghettis bolognaise, aka spaghetti in meat sauce. The dish takes its name from the city of Bologna, Italy’s renowned center of great cuisine, where the sauce is known as ragù alla bolognese. Ground beef is simmered in olive oil with pancetta (Italian bacon), finely diced carrots, celery and onion, minced garlic, red wine and tomatoes to create a great comfort dish as we head towards winter.
Spaghettis bolognaise / Spaghetti in meat sauce
One difference between today’s recipe and the Italian original is the use of herbes de Provence (a mixture of dried rosemary, savory, oregano and thyme), which is a personal favorite and the way it is often done in France. The Italian recipe may also involve milk, but that is omitted here. But the main difference is the cooking time.
I asked my friend Gisella — who is Sicilian but lives in Bologna, and who is an absolutely fabulous cook — to send me her recipe for ragù alla bolognese, and she said the following: ‘Cook for at least three hours.’ That’s the classic method. In my recipe, the cooking time once the sauce comes together is about half an hour, which is fine for Everyday French Chef-style cooking. If you’d rather do it Gisella’s way, add a little water to the sauce, cover the pot and stir frequently, adding more water if the sauce dries out.
Another difference in Gisella’s recipe is that she uses a mixture of ground beef and ground pork (instead of pancetta). And she uses no herbs at all. She also uses white wine instead of red. Otherwise, the recipes are virtually identical.
One key element of making pasta à l’italienne is to reheat the cooked pasta in its sauce over a low flame before serving — and not simply to plop the sauce onto a bowlful of pasta. This is true for most other pastas in sauce as well. It produces a more succulent dish.
The bolognaise sauce may of course be served with other forms of pasta than spaghetti. Good choices would include fusilli (aka rotini), tagliatelle, rigatoni or penne rigate.
Interestingly, the French never use the word ‘spaghetti’ in the singular. It’s always spaghettis, despite the fact that this is redundant because, in Italian, spaghetti is already plural. Never mind. It makes sense in that one never serves a single strand of spaghetti. This French logic is also applied to words like ‘hair’ (les cheveux), except if you’re talking about a single strand of hair, as in, ‘Waiter, there’s a hair in my soup.’
Linguistics aside (and btw linguini — ‘little tongues’ — would also be a good choice), bolognaise sauce will brighten even the dreariest November day. And the good news is that, if you have extra sauce, it may be frozen for use on another occasion.
Happy cooking.
