1 tablespoon olive oil
3 tablespoons butter plus 1 tablespoon for tossing the pasta
1 medium onion ,diced
3 celry sticks, diced
2 carrots, skinned and diced
1200 grams ground beef chuck or 400 gr pork sausage and 800g beef
salt
black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 cup whole milk
1 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cups canned imported italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice or 2/3 cup of tomato paste
3 cups chicken broth
1 sprig rosemary
1 bay leaf
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 pounds pasta
freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese at the table
Put the oil, butter and chopped onion in a wide thick bottomed pot and turn the heat on to medium.
Cook and stir the onion until it has become translucent, then add the chopped celery and carrot. Cook for about 15-20 minutes until they are soft, stirring vegetables to coat them well.
Add ground beef, a large pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper. Crumble the meat with a fork, stir well and cook until the beef has lost its raw, red color.
Add milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely. The liquid released from the beef and the additional milk will make this a lengthy process. The wider the surface area the better. The object is to reduce it by evaporating 90-95%of liquid and it could well take an hour to accomplish
Add the wine, let it simmer until it has evaporated, then add the tomato and stir thoroughly to coat all ingredients well.
Add the chicken broth, rosemary, and bay leaf. When the sauce begins to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with a slow but steady stream of bubbles breaking through to the surface.
Cook, uncovered, for 4 hours or more, stirring from time to time. While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that it begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat. To keep it from sticking, add 1/2 cup of water whenever necessary. At the end, however, no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce. Taste and correct for salt
Finish In a separate sauce-pan by combining with cooked drained pasta, reserved pasta water, and a tablespoon of butter. Serve with freshly grated Parmesan on the side.
This recipe started as Marcela' Hazan's until we learned from a local Italian restauranteur that while hers was mostly genuine, she omits the crucial chicken stock. We also learned that while this recipe is now precisely what you would expect in Bologna, there remains a Bolognese controversy as to whether butter and milk belong in the recipe. As it is a point of controversy and, as such commonly done, we include dairy elements to round out the sauce.
