Spaghetti Bolognese

I have been wanting to do a proper Spaghetti Bolognese (or, SpagBol, as the Brits call it) for a long time. This recipe has been twisted and abused over time and what has come out the other end is typically a greasy mess, thrown together without care, and usually with the aid of some kind of sauce out of a jar. The stereotypical mass-produced spaghetti with meat sauce.

Heston Blumenthal has a cookbook, In Search of Perfection, in which he explores classic dishes and reinvents them using the best possible methods, techniques and ingredients, but doing them in such a way as to retain the essence of the original.

Let me just say about this spaghetti: Start Early. I began the prep at 7:45AM. We ate at 6PM. Most of that time in between (8 hours!) was sauce simmering joy. As I am typing this the following morning, the entire kitchen and upstairs smells of this sauce. How was it?

I can't find a reason NOT to say that it's the best bowl of pasta I have ever eaten. Mind you, I LOVE pasta. I make it frequently and it is never the same thing twice. This was so unlike anything I would have made. There are ingredients in here I never would have considered putting in pasta (star anise and Thai fish sauce, for example).

The result is so mind-blowingly good. The best part is that it tastes familiar. It's as though you have eaten this before, at home, with people you love. There is something so rounded and rich and savory about the whole thing. Every new bite of it brought some new nuance that you didn't taste before. But the perception is that you ate this bowl of pasta somewhere, a long time ago, maybe when you first discovered how great pasta could be.

So, pasta lovers, if you want to get down to business, you owe it to yourself to try this. In the name of eating good pasta, this is an absolute triumph. Also, the sauce makes a TON. You could freeze this and re-heat it, no problem. Also, we had leftover ox cheeks in the freezer and I ground those up and used them in place of the oxtail, which was amazing. Oxtail is GREAT in pasta sauces, too!

SAUCE BASE
125 milliliters extra-virgin olive oil
250 g oxtail, boned and minced
250 g pork shoulder, 1 cm cubes
375 g oaked chardonnay
1 star anise
450 g onion, finely sliced
2 large cloves garlic
450 g onion, finely diced
400 g carrot, finely diced
125 g celery, finely diced
250 milliliters whole milk

TOMATO COMPOTE
1.1 kg vine-ripened tomatoes
1 teaspoon kosher salt
200 milliliters extra-virgin olive oil
3 large cloves garlic
225 g onion, finely diced
1 teaspoon coriander seed
1 star anise
3 cloves
4-5 drops Tabasco
4-5 drops Thai fish sauce
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon ketchup
30 milliliters sherry vinegar
1 bouquet garni, (consisting of 7 sprigs fresh thyme and 1 fresh bay leaf)

FINISH
1 batch reserved tomato compote
100 g spaghetti, (per person)
sherry vinegar, to taste
Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1 bouquet garni, (in a sheet of leek, wrap 6 tarragon leaves, 4 sprigs parsley and the leaves from a bunch of celery)
unsalted butter
extra-virgin olive oil
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

SAUCE BASE

Place a large, heavy bottomed frying pan over a medium heat for 5 minutes. Crush the star anise and bag it up in a square of muslin. Add this to the pan, along with 25ml of oil and the sliced onions. Cook for 20 minutes, or until the onions are soft and caramelized, stirring occasionally. Set aside.

Meanwhile, preheat another large, heavy-bottomed frying pan over a low heat for 5 minutes. Mince the garlic. Pour 50ml oil into the pan, then tip in the garlic, onions, carrots and celery and cook this soffritto over a medium-low heat for about 20 minutes, or until the raw onion smell has gone. Transfer the soffritto to a bowl and wipe clean the pan.

Place the pan over a high heat for 10 minutes. Pour in 50ml olive oil and wait until it starts smoking; it must be hot enough so the meat browns rather than stews. Add the cubed pork and minced oxtail. Stir until browned all over. (To brown properly, all the meat has to touch the surface of the pan. If it doesn't, do it in batches.) Tip in the browned meat into a sieve over a bowl (to allow the fat the drain off), then transfer the meat to a large pot or casserole. Deglaze the pan by adding a splash of wine, bringing it to the boil, and then scraping the base of the pan to collect all the tasty bits stuck to the bottom. Once the liquid has reduced by half, pour it into the large pot containing the meat.

Remove the bag of star anise from the caramelized onions and then tip the onions into the large pot containing the meat. Add the remaining wine and deglaze the frying pan (as in step 3). When the wine has reduced by half, pour it into the large pot. Add the soffritto to the pot as well.

Place the pot of Bolognese over a very low heat. Pour in the milk and enough water to cover entirely, and simmer very gently without a lid for 6 hours, stirring occasionally. At all times the ingredients should be covered by the liquid, so be prepared to add more water. (Don't worry if the milk becomes slightly granular; it won't affect the end result.)

TOMATO COMPOTE

Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Fill a large bowl with ice-cold water. Remove the cores from the tomatoes with a paring knife. Blanch the tomatoes by dropping them into the boiling water for 10 seconds and then carefully removing them to the bowl of ice-cold water. Take them out of the water immediately and peel off the spilt skins. (If the tomatoes are not ripe enough , make a cross with a sharp knife in the underside of each, to encourage the skins to come away. They can be left in the hot water for an extra 10 seconds or so, but it's important that they don't overheat and begin to cook.)

Cut the tomatoes in half vertically. Scoop out the seeds and the membrane with a teaspoon, over a chopping board. Roughly chop the seeds and membrane, then tip them into a sieve over a bowl. Sprinkle over the salt and leave for 20 minutes to extract their juice, after which you can discard the seeds and membrane, reserving only the juice.

Roughly chop the tomato flesh and set aside.

Meanwhile, place a large, heavy-bottomed pan over a low heat. Add 100ml of the olive oil. Mince the garlic, then put it into the pan along with the onion. Cook for 10-15 minutes, until soft but not colored.

Crush the coriander and put it in a muslin bag, along with the star anise and the cloves. Add it to the softened onions and garlic.

Take the juice drawn from the tomato seeds and membrane and add it to the onions and garlic along with the tomato flesh. Add the Tabasco, fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup and sherry vinegar. Drop in the bouquet garni and cook over a low heat for 2 hours.

To add a roasted note to the compote, add the remaining oil and turn up the heat to high. Fry the compote for 15-20 minutes, stirring regularly to make sure it doesn't catch, then pour off any olive oil not absorbed by the compote. Set aside a little to coat the cooked pasta. (The rest can be stored in a jar and makes a great base for a salad dressing. The compote itself will keep in the fridge for a week.)

COOKING THE BOLOGNESE

Stir the tomato compote (including the bag of spices) into the Bolognese sauce and cook over a very low heat for a final 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. For every 100g of pasta, you'll need 1 liter of water and 10 g salt. (If you don't have a large enough pan it's essential to use two pans rather than overcrowd one.)

Put the spaghetti Into the pan, give it a stir, then bring back to the boil and cook until the pasta is just tender but with a bite. Check the cooking time on the packet and use that as a guideline. but taste it every few minutes as this is the only way to judge when the pasta is ready.

Before taking the Bolognese sauce off the heat, check the seasoning and then add some sherry vinegar (tasting as you go) to balance the richness of the sauce. Add a generous grating of Parmesan (but not too much, as it can make the sauce overly salty) and remove the sauce from the heat. Take out the original thyme and bay bouquet garni and the bag of spices. Replace these with the parsley and tarragon bouquet garni, stir in 100g unsalted butter and let the sauce stand for 5 minutes.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain and rinse it thoroughly. Return to the pot to warm through. (Since the ragu Is not going to be mixed with the pasta, it needs to be rinsed to prevent it from becoming starchy and sticking together.) Add a generous knob of butter (about 50g per 400g of pasta) and coat with olive oil and the reserved oil from the final frying of the compote. To serve, wind portions of pasta around a carving fork and lay them horizontally in wide, shallow bowls. Top with the Bolognese sauce and finish with a grating of Parmesan.