This is my version of an Italian tomato-based sauce - or sugo - to have with pasta of pretty much any shape: penne, angel hair, fettuccine, ravioli, and even gnocchi - whatever floats your goat. You’ll need a whole day to devote to this sugo, but once it’s underway you can leave it almost unsupervised while it slowly simmers for eight hours. These quantities make a fucking bucketload, which I portion and freeze for a quick and easy meal at a later date. I use an 8.8 L enamelled cast-iron French oven because it distributes the heat beautifully during the simmering process, and also because Sir David Attenborough cancelled his show to have a pacemaker implanted so my husband bought the French oven to appease me but then Sir David rescheduled so I got to see the show and I got the French oven. And that, bitches, is how it’s done. (Sorry, I know unsolicited anecdotes are supposed to come after the recipe, but this one flowed so easily and it was only a short one.)
TIME
1 hour to prepare
8 hours to simmer
INGREDIENTS
60 mL extra virgin olive oil
1 kg osso buco (trim off the outer membrane)
2 lamb chops
6 Italian pork sausages*, peeled (discard the skin) and broken up
2 onions (brown or red), diced
6 garlic cloves, finely diced
2 eggplants, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
3 L tomato passata (I use 6 x 500 mL bottles of Don Antonio Sugo di Pomodoro Tradizionale)
1 L beef stock**
140 g tomato paste (concentrate)
250 mL dry red wine
1/4 cup sugar
salt & pepper to taste
*look for sausages with a coarse texture and chunky fat
**I use the beef stock to wash out any tomato passata left in the bottles before pouring it into the pot
METHOD
Heat half the oil in a large pot over medium heat and sear the osso buco and lamb for about a minute each side and then remove from the pot; add the sausage and cook for about two minutes, stirring occasionally, and then set aside with the other meat. You might want to cover the pot with a splatter screen for this part because it makes a fucking mess.
Add the other half of the oil to the pot and then all the diced vegetables; stir to coat the vegetables in the oil, and then turn the heat down to low and let the vegetables soften and sweat down for about 20-30 minutes with the lid on, stirring occasionally.
Pour in the passata and beef stock and stir; add the tomato paste, red wine, sugar and stir again; add the meat back into the pot and carefully combine because the pot will be almost fucking overflowing at this stage. Replace the lid, turn up the heat to medium, and bring to boil.
Once boiling, reduce heat to low (I use a simmer mat because I have a gas cooktop), and leave the lid slightly ajar. Now it’s practically cooking itself, but you might want to top it up with hot water every couple of hours and stir it through so it doesn’t thicken up too much. After a couple of hours of simmering, the top layer of sugo will split into a lovely orangey-red glistening slick of oil and rendered fat.
Add salt and pepper to taste at the end because the amount will depend on how much the sauce has reduced, and how much salt was in the sausages and stock. Also, check that the acidity of the tomato has been slightly neutralised by the sugar you added earlier, and if it’s still too acidic, add another tablespoon or so of sugar.
Serve with your favourite type of pasta, cooked according to the packet instructions for al dente - always fucking al dente. Don’t overcook it. Set a timer on your fucking phone, for fuck’s sake. I always spoon a few ladles of sugo into the pasta after it’s drained and mix it through, then I divide the pasta amongst bowls and spoon more sugo on top before topping with freshly grated parmesan. And if I find you’ve used this cheese-in-a-shaker-jar shit (refer to the image below) instead of proper parmesan, I’m adding your name to my punch bowl.
