Meat + tomato = ..?

Ragu’. When you are abroad, is one of the staples for fake Italian food.  It is a meat  and tomato sauce.

And believe me, literally anything can go under this description.

I have come to the conclusion that most people who don’t like Italian food  have just tried ragu’, or Bolognese sauce, as it is known worldwide (actually there is a brand in the UK with a giant RAGU on the label, it is hilarious!), and they have come to the fully justified conclusion that Italian cooking is heavy and disgusting and rough.

Now, also in Italy you can find a bad ragu’. It is an everyday food with a hint of ‘special’, extremely traditional, and there are as many varieties as families, and not each and every family can cook well of course.   But when you find a good one, and that you will usually find at home, well, you understand why Italian cooking is the best in the entire world. You will understand a lot of things about what makes Italian food special – ingredients, time, quantities, all goes ‘ad occhio’ – you see it; your ragu’ is good only because you have been making it for years and years, you grew up with your granny cooking ragu’ every sunday morning. As always with Italian cooking, you are going to need top quality ingredients – however for ragu’ this does not mean expensive ones, indeed it is a popular and relatively cheap dish, invented to make a little meat go a long way.