La Fortezza Bolognese Sauce + Pasta

This is a dish we serve at all of our retreats. Everyone LOVES it. We love to make fresh pasta with the retreat guests. Then we serve this beautiful Bolognese sauce with it. Very satisfying. The leftover sauce is used to top pizza.

Serves 4-6

 Ingredients:

½ cup  extra virgin olive oil

1 lb ground beef (at least 15 % fat)

1 carrot, chopped

4  ribs of celery chopped

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 14 oz can Mutti polpo tomatoes

Preparation:

Place the olive oil in a Dutch over. Add the ground beef to one side of the pan, it should be in one piece. Chef’s Tip: This allows the ground beef brown evenly and it is less likely to dry out.

Add the carrot, celery, onion, and sprinkle the salt over the top. On medium heat sauté the meat until it is deep brown and then flip it, making sure to keep it whole, let it brown on the other side. Meanwhile, stir your veggies to ensure that they don’t burn they will be cooking on the other half of the pot, sauté them until caramelized. They will be a nice brown color.

When the veggies are cooked, stir in the garlic, and then begin to break up the ground beef with a heat proof spatula mixing it into the veggies. Once the ground beef is completely broken up, add the tomatoes with their juice. Break up the tomatoes with your spoon and let them gently cook down until they’re reduced by half. At this point, you’re Bolognese should be finished cooking and it’s ready to use on pasta or pizza.

Chef’s Tip: Grass fed ground beef is much better than choice or prime when it comes to flavor.

Basic Egg Pasta Dough

For 4 Servings

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

½  teaspoon salt

2 eggs

4 egg yolks

All-purpose flour for dusting

For the pasta: Sift the flour add salt , mix in a 2-quart mixing bowl. Add the eggs to the bowl and mix them into the flour to form a dough. Knead the dough until it becomes smooth, about 5 to 10 minutes. Wrap in plastic wrap, and leave to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes to 4 hours before rolling out. Any longer and your risk the dough oxidizing and turning a dark color.

Preparation:

Pasta Machine: Set the pasta machine rollers on their widest setting. Cut the pasta dough into quarters. Leave three of the pieces under plastic wrap to keep from drying out. Lightly dust the other piece with all-purpose flour and press it into a rectangle with almost the width of the rollers. You’ll want to maintain this width as you roll. Feed the dough through the machine, fold the dough in half crosswise. Repeat twice. Then without folding, feed the dough through the second widest setting. Repeat on the next thinnest, setting the rollers one notch thinner each time until you roll the dough through on the second to thinnest setting. Trim the two ends with a knife so that they are straight, and put on a lightly floured surface. Now your dough is ready to shape in to many types of pasta.

Hand cut: Dust a wooden board with 1 tbsp of flour.

Unwrap the dough and flatten it with a rolling pin. Roll out the dough into a thin pasta sheet, to less than 1/8 inch thickness. To cut the pasta sheets into tagliatelle, You can cut the pasta sheet into strips making Tagliatelli, by rolling the sheet like a jelly roll into a 3 inch roll. Cut into ¼ inch strips, starting on the right side of the log, cut 6 cuts then toss the strips unfurling them into pasta nests.

In salted water in a 5 quart pasta pot at a rolling boil add the pasta, cook until pasta rises to the top of the pot, pull one out to sample, it should have a bite or al dente. Serve with your favorite sauce or topping.