The No Recipe Cookbook by Samantha Pillay

Author:Samantha Pillay [Pillay, Samantha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

PASTA RAGU

The principles here are very similar to the Bolognese sauce, which is essentially a ragu. But for a beef ragu, I like to use gravy beef. Other choices are chuck or blade steak. These are more affordable cuts of beef. Talk to your butcher about other cheap cuts. These cuts do well in the slow-cooker, but if you don’t have one you can just cook it on very low heat on the stove or in the oven, but you’ll need to add more liquid, as explained below. The fat helps to keep the meat tender and prevents it from drying out and the tough collagen is cooked out, leaving tender meat that falls apart. You can serve this with pasta or alternatives such as rice or polenta. Sunday is often my cooking day. I might start this on a Sunday morning, first thing, before breakfast, making enough for three meals, and freeze all of it to use for midweek dinners. Then I’ll put the breadmaker on, cook pancakes for breakfast, make biscuits for recess and still make another meal for the evening. To save space in the freezer, I make a heavy ragu with little sauce to freeze, and just add passata when I defrost it later to increase the volume.

Step 1: For the best flavour, fry the diced beef first in oil to brown the outside, in batches if needed. Transfer to the slow-cooker. I’ll do the same if I’m adding diced pancetta. Deglaze the pan with verjuice, beef stock or red wine and reduce this liquid to about a half to a quarter of the original volume and add to the slow-cooker. I once opened a not-very-expensive red wine that I didn’t like. I boiled the contents of the whole bottle to reduce the volume to about a quarter and added it to a ragu and it was delicious. You’re not generally going to want to use a whole bottle of red wine up in your cooking, but if you ever end up with a bottle you don’t want to drink…

Step 2: Add your other ingredients to the slow-cooker. Use minimal liquid. Not only does the slow-cooker allow you to get on with other jobs while you leave it on for 8 hours, the long cooking time means you only need to roughly chop the other ingredients. I might cut a peeled onion only into half or quarters, add garlic cloves whole and cut the carrot and celery into one-inch pieces. I might add some tomato paste, a small amount of passata and a couple of homemade frozen veal stock cubes. A cup of liquid is enough. Lay whole stems of rosemary, thyme or oregano and parsley on top of a couple of bay leaves, cover and cook on a low setting for 8 hours.

Step 3: At the end, remove the bay leaves and stems and break up the meat with a fork. To serve, toss the ragu through just-cooked pasta so the pasta is coated with the rich flavours.

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