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Recently, I was reading about pasta and related things on Wikipedia. I discovered that while spaghetti bolognese (affectionately known as "spag bol") is one of the classic Italian dishes in the British imagination, the Bolognese sauce (or ragù alla bolognese to use its Italian name) is rarely, if ever, actually served with spaghetti in its native Bologna. Instead, tagliatelle or lasagne verdi are generally used.
Armed with that newly-discovered knowledge, I resolved to try for a more authentic Italian meal by trying a Bolognese with tagliatelle (I suppose you could call it a "tag bol"). That's what I enjoyed for dinner tonight.
To celebrate the fact that I was using a more authentic pasta, I decided to go for a slightly more sophisticated version of the sauce than I usually make up. My basic recipe consists of an onion, minced beef, carrots, tomatoes, seasoning (generally black pepper, basil and a bay leaf, if I remember correctly) and water, perhaps with the addition of a few other vegetables if I have any to use up. On this occasion, I added some bacon chunks, tomato puree, oregano, fresh thyme, Worcester sauce, red wine and beef stock (from Oxo cubes). I also washed out the remains of a jar of pesto rosso into the mix. In addition to the slightly expanded ingredients list, I let it simmer for at least two hours instead of the usual hour. The result was a beautifully rich, flavoursome sauce that was a delight to look upon and even better to eat.
It worked really well with the tagliatelle too.
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