Pour in the wine and cook for 10 minutes. Add the blitzed tomatoes, lower the heat and let the sauce cook for 15 minutes while you prepare the rest.
In another pan fry the fresh mushrooms, the soy mince and tofu, together with the rehydrated mushrooms. Just as when you cook meat, you want a dark golden caramelisation over the outside of the mushrooms and soy, and to get that you will have to fry in batches. I did it in about 5 or 6 and it takes a bit of time. When each batch is nicely caramelised, transfer to a plate.
Add the caramelised soy, tofu and mushrooms to the tomato sauce, with the miso, Marmite, yeast, herbs, reserved porcini water and vegetable stock and leave to braise with the lid off for 1 hour. Keep stirring and scraping the bottom every so often to prevent the sauce catching.
After an hour it should be rich, well reduced and full of flavour. Season with the salts, pepper and nutmeg and then you’re ready to cook your pasta. I usually cook about 90g pasta per person, and reduce the cooking time by a minute or two. I like to finish the dish in the traditional way by mixing the sauce with the pasta over a medium heat, which completes the cooking of the pasta and binds everything together nicely. I suggest about 2 ladles of sauce per person – be generous! Scatter over basil leaves to serve.
Blonde Ragu with Pork, Veal & Sage
I’m going to go out on a limb here and claim that not many Brits have eaten a blonde meat sauce. It’s probably the least known of all the ragu pasta sauces, and this is a shame, because it’s really delicious. It’s cooked in almost exactly the same way as the other sauces: a mix of butter and olive oil, soffrito (I use garlic although classically you don’t), veal and pork mince, pancetta or smoked bacon, all the woody herbs, but then instead of tomato you add white wine and milk and finish the sauce with cream, sage, lemon zest and nutmeg. The sauce clings to the pasta – always use a wide variety such as pappardelle or tagliatelle – and is then finished with loads of freshly grated Parmesan.
Any leftover ragu works really well on a pizza or in a grilled cheese sandwich. Strange but fantastic.
SERVES 8
Preparation time 45 minutes
Cooking time 2 hours
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
2 large onions, finely chopped
2 medium carrots, finely chopped
2 leeks, trimmed and finely chopped
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
400g pork mince
400g veal mince
200g piece of smoked bacon or pancetta, skinned, trimmed, chopped and minced in a food processor
3–4 bay leaves
3 sprigs of rosemary
few sprigs of thyme
400ml dry white wine
1 pint whole milk
1 pint fresh chicken stock
300ml double cream
zest of 2 lemons
leaves of ½ small bunch of sage
½ nutmeg, grated
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
Parmesan, to serve
Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil and 1 tablespoon of the butter in a large flameproof casserole. Add the onions, carrots, leeks, celery and garlic and cook over a very low heat for about 30 minutes, or until they have softened, lost all their water and are tinged with a golden hue.
Meanwhile heat a frying pan until very hot, add the rest of the oil and brown the pork and veal mince together with the bacon or pancetta in batches. Transfer the meat and any juices to the casserole. Add the bay leaves, rosemary and thyme and then pour over the white wine. Bring to the boil and cook for 5 minutes, then pour over the milk and stock. When the liquid comes to the boil, lower the heat and partially cover the casserole with a lid. Cook gently for 2 hours.
The sauce is ready when the meat is cooked and the sauce reduced and super-rich. At this point pour over the cream and add the lemon zest, sage leaves and nutmeg and give everything a good stir. Let this cook for a further 5 minutes to reduce a little and take on these last flavours. In the meantime cook your pasta. Season the sauce and then pour a couple of ladlefuls over each portion of pasta and serve with Parmesan and lots of black pepper.
When making a stew, I always favour ox cheek, oxtail or featherblade because they cook into juicy, falling-apart meat and a mouth-sticking braise, which is what makes them so perfect for dishes like this one.
When cooking simple dishes like this, it’s important to remember that the quality of ingredients is key. Always use fresh stock, rather than a cube – the flavour and consistency of the stew just won’t be the same without. If you don’t have time to make your own, you can find fresh stock in the chiller cabinet of most supermarkets – I think Truefoods or Waitrose stocks are the best and I have a freezer full of them.
I always serve this stew with mash (when I said this on social media I was told I was insane, although you will be hard pushed to convince me that double potato is ever a bad thing), but you can also serve with buttered crusty white bread if you prefer!
SERVES 4
Preparation time 25 minutes
Cooking time 3 hours 10 minutes
olive or rapeseed oil or ghee, for frying
2 ox cheeks (roughly 900g), each cut into 6 pieces
10 small onions or shallots, peeled but left whole
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs of rosemary
few sprigs of thyme
2 carrots, halved lengthways and cut into 6cm pieces
1 tbsp plain flour
500ml fresh beef stock
1 leek, cut into 4 long sections
400g potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
handful of parsley, chopped
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
First, get a frying pan really hot and put in 1 tablespoon of your chosen fat. Season the ox cheek pieces well with salt and pepper and brown them in batches. Remove them from the pan once nicely caramelised and set aside.
In a heavy-based casserole, heat another couple of tablespoons of fat and throw in the onions and the bay leaf, rosemary and thyme. Allow to cook for 5 minutes over a higher heat than normal, until the onions start to soften and caramelise a little at the edges. Next add the carrots and cook for a couple more minutes, stirring regularly.
Stir in the flour and allow to cook for a couple of minutes. Add the stock and the leeks, followed by the ox cheeks and their residual juices. If necessary top up the casserole with water so that everything is just covered with liquid. Bring to the boil, then