Ragú alla casa dei sogni

It was the first official night of the house of dreams last night so I decided to cook up a ragu in honour of the occasion. I didn't really know what time everybody would be turning up and felt that this was something good that I could cook all day and then just throw together when everyone arrived.

I decided on using three meats: minced pork, minced lamb and some salami.
I started by making a soffritto which I read somewhere (can't remember where) should be the basic structure for any ragu. I fried onions and garlic until soft and then added the chopped celery and carrot.

Cooked until soft, I then took the soffritto out of the pan and begun frying the meat. I had coarsely minced the salami and it went in with everything else. I had the burner on full to try and caramelise the meat as I did in the venison ragu.

I caramelised as much as I dared to before adding a few glasses of red wine to deglaze. This was soaked up pretty much immediately by the meat. I then added the tomato puree one tin at a time, cooking it until it had changed colour from red to a brownish colour.


I recombined with the soffritto and added the porcini mushrooms (thanks to Nats for those) and the water that they had been soaking in, along with some oregano and bay leaves.

Whilst I let that simmer in the pressure cooker for a couple of hours I got on with making the pappardelle pasta. This is my favourite shape for ragu as I think it holds the sauce better than a spaghetti or linguine and there is something satisfying about the thick loops of pasta with rich ragu nestled beneath it. I let it dry out for a couple of hours over a wooden frame while I waited for the housemates to arrive...

I finally put it all together in a large dish so that everyone could just tuck in and help themselves, mopping up any spare sauce with some ciabatta (not artisan this time! Sainsburys seemed to have run out again) and knocking back a lot of red wine. It was the first night of the house of dreams after all. I was pretty pleased with the end result but think i will chop the salami into small pieces instead of mincing as the large bits I came across gave a very satisfying intense bite.