Italian ragu

Italian ragu is maybe the most typical Italian tomato sauce. As it origins from Bologna, it is often called "bolognese" ... even if you ask a Bologna citizen about "pasta bolognese", she or he will answer you that it doesn't exist! For them it's ragu. For the rest of the world it's "bolognese" (that means from Bologna). As being spread and repeated all over the world, it gained different meanings and recipes, but the true one is the one that is cooked for about 7 hours.The first time I ate this ragu, I thought it might be a heavy dish, with all that cooking time. But not! It was very digestive... and delighful! Ragu comes from a french word (ragout) that means: awake the appetite. It is used to name a sauce usually made of tomato and meat. Ingredients (4 people): • 1 minced carrot • 1 minced onion • 1 piece of celery minced • 6 spoons of extra virgin olive oil • 1/2 kg of ground meet (veal, but you can also mix veal and pork) • 1 or 2 glasses of a good red wine • 400gr of tomato puree (passata) • 1,5 liter of broth • salt How to do it: Fry the minced carrot, onion and celery with the extra virgin olive oil. Before they get coloured, add the ground meat and mix it well, using a fork to distribute it well among the ingredients, avoiding creating meatballs. Add the wine (it's better to use a good wine, maybe the same you're going to drink together with your ragu dish). When the wine evaporates, add the tomato puree and half a glass of water. Mix it all well and low the gas to the minimum possible. Once in a while, when it dries, add a couple cookwares of broth and go ahead like this for the next hours. The friend who introduced me to Italian ragu uses to leave the gas on (the very minimum) and go to bed, so it cooks through the night. I do not counsel you to do the same, as I find it very dangerous as we always have to pay attention to gas. But it renders the idea of how long it needs cooking, and how low the gas may be. When it's done it'll have a rust color and is ready to season your pappardelle , the ideal pasta shapes for this sauce tip: Before mixing it with the pasta, add a piece of butter and mix it well.