Meat Sauce.

Typically, I make a ragu a few times a month or whenever I get a hankering for Italian perfection in a bowl. It’s a great big hug and a classic dish all wrapped up in one. But there’s kind of a golden rule when it comes to a great Italian sauce. That rule is that no matter what you do it will never be better than your mother’s.

I am in no way, shape, or form Italian and my mom is certainly not a great chef. However, there were a handful of meals she would make constantly when I was growing up and meat sauce was one of them. I won’t go into detail as to how great it was (it was pretty great). I will say that during a family vacation to Rome years ago I ordered Spaghetti Bolognese for room service and it tasted exactly the same as my mom’s (hers may have been slightly better. But you don’t want to insult Italians).

Tomato based meat sauce or ragu is something I make so often that I could basically make it with my eyes closed. I’ve made it with all kinds of meat, beef, pork, bison, lamb, chicken, turkey, and even with mushrooms if I don’t want to eat meat that day. Not to toot my own horn, but my sauce is pretty good. But something happened when I started recipe testing a few weeks ago, the sauce just wasn’t as good as it usually is. I tried making it with a more expensive wine, better tomatoes, very fresh herbs, tons of lemon, and I made sure I was prepared with all my mise en plac in order. It wasn’t bad but it had lost its authenticity because I was trying to make it perfect.

I ended up throwing away my recipe and I just cooked the dish the way I normally would which is a hybrid of the chef inspired cooking I try to emulate and my mom’s recipe. Shockingly enough, that ended up being one of the best sauces I’ve ever made. I used one of the cheaper Italian bottles of wine I use often. It’s Calice Di Toscana Rosso Fioretti. And if I’m being specific, I use the 2014. It’s mild, not too acidic, and it melds well with all the flavours in this dish.

Two nods in this recipe to my mom.

One, I used the biggest can of pureed tomatoes I could find (organic). Don’t buy salt free. Buy the good sodium rich stuff.

And two, garlic powder. I chop up a couple of cloves of garlic anyway but that garlic powder is key to a good sauce.

I have decided just to write down what I do and hopefully it’s tangible. If it’s not, I’m really sorry. Hopefully I can get my act together the next time around and write a proper recipe.

Meat Sauce

· Get out a large pot or Dutch oven, pour two or three good glugs of olive oil into the pot, and heat the pot over medium high heat for a few minutes.

· Dice up an onion and throw it into the pot with the oil. Add a pinch of salt to the onions, (it helps to evaporate the water in the onion quicker) stir and cook until translucent.

· Small dice one or two carrots and celery stocks and throw them in with the onions. Cook for a few minutes.

· Chop two or three cloves of garlic and a handful of parsley. Add them to the pot along with a little less than a teaspoon each of dried basil and dried oregano, a little less than half a teaspoon of fennel seeds (the anis flavour in the fennel seeds adds a nice bright surprise without using a fresh ingredient), half a teaspoon of garlic powder, a couple of bay leaves, and tons of freshly ground pepper or however much you’re comfortable with. A safe bet with the pepper is measure close to an eighth of a teaspoon but it deceivably takes a lot of effort turning a peppermill to get that amount. Also add a tablespoon of honey to the pot.

· Add a pound of ground meat of some kind to the pot. Stir it around in the aromatics until it’s not quite cooked and pour in a little more than half a bottle of the wine. Reduce the liquid by about half and add the pureed tomatoes. Fill up the can from the tomatoes with water, pour the liquid into the pot. I add another pinch of salt here if I don’t think the tomatoes are salty enough.

· Allow everything to come to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, cover, and forget about it for an hour. When you come back you will have sauce. Taste to adjust the seasoning or add parsley if you want.

· The obvious choice for serving is to make boiled pasta and pour the sauce over the top. I personally use a spiralizer and make zucchini noodles and heat them in a small frying pan with a ladle or two of the sauce just to heat through. Mashed potatoes are also a great option.

And that’s it. That’s the dish that has been giving me a headache. It’s really good though and it’s almost therapeutic to make.