I ‘hear’ you but I look at recipes and they look the same. Do YOU know what’s the difference? TIA.
That is the difference. A ragu can use any type of meat. A Bolognese is a specific braised meat sauce.
Sauce Bolognese
In October 1982 the delegation of Bologna 's Academy of Italian Cooking has filed with the Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture in Bologna, the official recipe of Bolognese sauce , with a view to ensuring continuity and respect for the culinary tradition of Bologna in Italy and the world.
A traditional sauce for four people can be prepared with:
300 grams of lean beef (the folder that is the part that separates the lungs from the ribs)
100 g of fresh pork bellies
half a glass of red wine (sangiovese dry)
a glass of meat broth
5 tablespoons of tomato sauce (triple or double concentrate)
1 onion, 1 carrot and 1 stalk of celery yellow, (50 g each, whole)
a spoonful of cream outcrop
Preparation
Fry the chopped bacon and vegetables, then add the ground beef and, following a heavy browning, pour half a glass of red wine (sangiovese) dry.
Evaporation of the wine finished add the tomato sauce, salt and pepper to taste, a cup of broth and continue cooking over low heat for a couple of hours, adding the cream.
Modern variant: change folder and bacon, as lean beef and pork (eg sausage), cream with a couple of tablespoons of milk and fry meat and vegetables in two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
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You can see the whole difference easily
In the north, Bologna where tomatoes aren’t used as much because of the environment to be grown . Verse the south where they are grown more prolific because of the weather. Thus the braised meat for pasta is different. Milk will also be used in the north because of cattle.
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Ragù is the traditional meat sauce of Bologna and the surrounding area. There are as many recipes as there are grandmothers and different families use different meats or combinations.
Fettuccine (or whatever) “alla Bolognese” is what other Italians call that, because “ragù” means something else in many regions.
Spaghetti Bolognese or “spag bol” is a British mutation. Americans often call their mutations “Bolognese sauce.” The popular Japanese version has ketchup and is hardly recognizable as a relative of traditional ragù.
Sounds like an April Fools’ joke.
We could cook the same recipe side by side . And it would come out different. That’s what’s great .
The Bolognese I’ve eaten in L.A. restaurants seem to have more beefy, beef broth flavor and Ragu more tomatoey.
Bolognese and ragù are both words that mean different things to different people and in different places. Even in Emilia, some families make their ragù with tomatoes and some make it without. The original recipes had no tomato.
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That makes sense - it does seem to be different to different people and chefs. I should edit my post to say “the ones I’ve tried in L.A. restaurants.”
My Cream Co. box included a pound labeled “beef fajita meat,” so I used the NY Times’ marinade recipe, substituting lemon for lime. Sautéed onion with roasted peppers and jalapeños from jars. I was going to make cabbage something like the Serious Eats recipe but after I sliced the onion I realized what I thought was a small red cabbage was a giant red beet, so it’s just onions and grated carrots with salt, apple balsamic, oregano, and black pepper. Pretty good, would have been better if I’d cooked the mystery meat less. The La Finca tortillas FoodSaver’d and frozen since September were surprisingly good, better than “fresh” from Berkeley Bowl.
Bratwurst from a Bavarian sausage maker. Thank you . So freaking good . . Sauteed onions with mustard. Fried eggs, with bread . Cheers.
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The three best cuisines are Japanese, French, and Italian. There is a big dropoff after that. (Sorry, China.)
Japanese and French require serious cooking skills and are beyond the ability of most home cooks.
Italian, not so much. It’s easy to cook very satisfying pasta and risotto dishes so long as the ingredients are high quality.
This is bucatini with tomatoes, carrots, onions, celery, olive oil, rosemary, parmigiano, and romano. Requires no skill, but it was as tasty as any pasta dish I had at Bestia.
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I say that if you can read you can cook. Find a good, reputable book and you’re on your way.
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Groan
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Cup noodles, French fries, and pizza, are the best of their respective genres.
The careful preparation of boiling water, filling the ramen cup pourover coffee style, and precisely timing the closed lid to 3 minutes, is especially difficult to master.
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So you either make your own pasta or Bestia doesn’t. ?
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Spoken like someone who hasn’t had first-rate Chinese food.
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Grilled chicken legs, grilled homemade flatbread, and garlic sauce.
The recipe came from the Lebanese boyfriend of a friend of a friend. Peel one head of garlic and pound with one tablespoon salt. Add the juice of one lemon and one cup of olive oil. Serve with warm or room-temperature (not hot) chicken thighs and flatbread. Use the bread to pull the meat off the bones.
Instacart substituted whole legs for thighs, which work better. Still a great dish.
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Looks good! Would you mind sharing the recipe?
Speaking of Iron Chef Chen Kenichi, as related to this room topic, I’ve been playing around with his famous mapo tofu recipe. He goes over the steps in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywHT-OZCCJQ&t=8s
I’ve actually been to Shisen Honten in Tokyo. The Singapore location, under his son Kentaro, has two Michelin stars. You can also compare how his son makes the dish here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dIMCVlmdAA
Almost the same, with a few variations, but the big difference is how quickly he does it (he has quite some ladle skill).
I’ve been trying to recreate this recipe for years at home (maybe 20), and I think I’ve almost got it pretty close to the original. One of the hardest parts is locating and putting together all the ingredients with a similar flavor profile. Like the chili he sources then powders, the infused oils they prepare from scratch, the black bean, tianmianjang and doubanjiang, garlic leaves which you don’t normally see (I saw it at Santa Monica Farmer’s Market), not being lazy to forget things like proper soup stock, a pork of high quality and no ‘smell’, and carefully choosing fragrant and high quality Sichuan mala peppercorns. I’ve found that if you buy 5 different jars of sweet bean past, they will all taste different and affect the final result in some way. The same can be said about the mala pepper brand, whatever the pig has been feeding on, even the type of tofu origin or soy brand…
You can ofcourse substitute if you’re not as ambitious or obsessive as me, in getting things perfect. For his famous chili shrimp recipe, he sometimes adds ketchup to give it sweetness. So even he has a tendency to play around. I’ve also seen him make a mapo tofu with wagyu beef, and ladle it over a dish of oysters sauteed in an egg swirl.
His Iron Chef battles were some of my favorites and most dramatic, of which Battle Pork (1998) against Chef Shuqing Liang was incredible, and one of the few times I’ve seen it go into overtime.
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