Sugo Al Ragu - Slow Cooked Oxtail Ragu Pasta Sauce

Ragu seems to be the 'flavour of the month' so to speak. It's all over Masterchef, My Kitchen Rules and what all the celebrity chefs are talking about. As an Italian (Sicilian) we never actually called this simple pasta sauce a ragu, to us as the children, the Aussiefied version was just chunky meat sauce. We had this discussion around the dinner table not too long ago about all the trendy terminology that has been picked up and is now in everyday vernacular. If I had a dollar for everytime my Nonna said that a 'latte' literally translates into milk and how absurd it would be to order a large milk from Gloria Jeans, I'd be a rich lady! So is similar with ragu... "what's this ragu?" she says, you would have never seen that on a menu 30 years ago. Well I'm certainly glad things have changed and we are seeing this delightful dish more and more.

This particular dish brings me back to some of my earliest memories. My Dad has always taken great pleasure in watching the infants in our family suck on a big juicy bone (like a puppy) and get a lovely big sauce moustache after having pasta with sugo al ragu.

Like a lot of Italian cooking, it's very hard to place quantities on ingredients and such, since Italians are BAD with recipes, everything is by look and feel, which is kind of beautiful too. Although this forever means that nothing is ever as good as Nonna's!

With this recipe anything goes really, so if you have pork use that, if you have lamb use that, spice it up and use a combo if that's what takes your fancy, whatever your taste buds desire will be perfect!

Watch the tutorial...

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Sugo Al Ragu - Slow Cooked Oxtail Ragu Pasta Sauce

by Dee @ Master Chefette April-29-2015

A delcious, full-bodied, melt in the mouth pasta sauce. Perfect comfort food!

Ingredients

• 2kg Oxtail
• 1 Diced Onion
• 2 cloves Garlic
• 1/2 cup Red Wine
• 400g tin Diced Tomatoes
• 2 x 700g bottles Passata
• 2+ litres Water
• 2 Bay Leaf
• 1 stick Celery
• 1 Carrot
• 500g Tomato Paste
• Salt, Pepper, Herb Seasoning
• 1 tblsp Sugar
• 1 knob Butter
• Dash Milk

Instructions

1. Heat a large pot on the stove covering base with olive oil. Once warm add onion and garlic.2. Add oxtail or preferable meat to the pot and seal until lightly caramelised.3. Add in red wine.4. Add passata, tomato paste and diced tomatoes to the pot followed by the water. At this point the sauce should be quite thin and liquidy (see video).5. Throw in celery stick, whole carrot, bay leaves and seasoning followed by milk, butter and sugar.6. Allow sauce to simmer on a medium heat for 3-4 hours stirring constantly. Keep tasting to see whether more seasoning or water is needed.7. Nonna says when you start to see the dark oil on top of the sauce, it's ready. So once ready, serve on top of your favourite pasta.

Details

Prep time: 15 mins Cook time: 3 hour Total time: 3 hour 15 mins Yield:

Chefette's Italian Shellfish Stew!

Now I apologise in advance for the lack of specific quantities in this recipe, but when you're cooking true Italian style, "a little bit of this" and "a little bit of that" are perfectly fine. This dish is PACKED full of flavour, is relatively cheap and providing you don't over indulge on fresh ciabatta bread, it is relatively healthy.

Italian Shellfish Stew

1 bag of mussels (de-bearded)

350ish grams of green prawns

A whole crab or some large crab legs

(Any other seafood that takes your fancy)

1 litre of tomato passata

Some fresh tomatoes

4 cloves of garlic

Fresh chilli

Parsley

Olive Oil

1 red onion

White Wine

Ciabatta bread for serving

1. Start by ensuring all your seafood is clean and ready to use.

2. In a large pot with a generous amount of olive oil, add diced onion, chilli and garlic and fry until soft, but not brown.

3. Add a generous splash of white wine, and by splash maybe 1 cup or so.

4. Add passata, chopped tomatoes and large handful of chopped flat leaf parsley to the pot and simmer for about 30 minutes. (Add salt, pepper and sugar to the sauce to taste)

5. Add shellfish to the sauce and simmer with the lid on for about 20 minutes or until mussels have opened up. (Depending on the seafood you're using and the size, this time will vary. Also if you have smaller prawns you may want to add these last as they won't take long to cook.

6. Serve with ciabatta bread, which is delicious to soak up the beautiful sauce!