Zuppa alla Bolognese

I started to make soups for lunch as part of a long term plan to lose weight, but really missed some of my old favourites like a big plate of spaghetti bolognese. I decided to invent soups that tried to recreate classic dishes I used to enjoy (my Cottage Pie soup’s not bad either), but with far fewer calories - and this is my favourite!

My partner is Italian, and I’ve honed my own bolognese style sauce - or ragu - over many years, mostly by watching her mother make it back home in the Italian mountains. This soup captures all the flavour of that sauce, but takes out most of the calories as there’s very little pasta. It’s also healthy and low fat as well. I tend to make it from leftover roast beef from a Sunday joint, so it’s thrifty too. Enjoy!

UPDATE: I've added four videos which show this recipe as well now, available on my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6aNdpB0GYFlEtDpfTmNdRa1uyje6gjpv

Method

1. First chop your celery, carrot and onions (the classic Italian soffritto) into 1cm cubes, and fry gently in a tablespoon or so of olive oil for about 10 minutes until they’ve just taken on a little colour.
2. Next add the same amount of leftover roast beef cubes as you have vegetables, again cut into 1cm cubes.
3. Add beef (or other meat) stock to cover the vegetables and meat and give a good chunky texture.
4. Add a tablespoon or so of tomato puree (depending how much veg and meat you’ve used), to give colour and flavour.
5. Chop up some fresh herbs and stir in. I usually use rosemary, oregano and thyme - I like it quite herby!
6. Add a couple of inches of leftover parmesan crust.
7. Simmer for at least 30 minutes, until the veg is tender and the parmesan has infused.
8. For the last 5 minutes or so of cooking, sprinkle in a good handful or two (again depending how much of the other ingredients you’ve used) of small pasta shapes, e.g. farfalline (little bows). Check the cooking instructions for whichever you’ve used for the right timing.
9. Top with a little extra grated parmesan if you wish - and enjoy!

The Best Bolognese Ever

Yes, I know, everyone's bolognese is the best ever, but I do have a trick up my sleeve (what great bolognese doesn't?) - the meat that I use to make it ... but more of that later.

In our house bolognese sauce is usually referred to as Sugo - that's the Italian word for any sauce like this. It's also referred to as meat ragu, but the bottom line is that most of the time the sauces have more in common than they do differences. Mine is quite simple really - I always use onion, carrot, celery, beef, tomatoes, wine and herbs. Sometimes other things get added, and I might use different herbs and wines (even white wine sometimes, which is surprisingly common in Italy), but it's the beef that really makes the sauce.

Sugo in progress, with roast cherry tomatoes (and a solitary half pepper in the middle!) that I was doing at the same time

Since I discovered how fab Rib of beef is (on the bone, naturally) I always buy it if I can get it. But it's not cheap - you can easily set yourself back £30 or so for a large joint. But I maintain that it's actually one of the best cuts for thrifty cooking too, because at the end of the day you can get so many meals out of it that it starts to work out at way less than £1 per meal. I even did some calcuations the other day to prove my point, and worked out that a piece of Brisket that I bought the other day actually worked out more expensive than Rib if you consider how many meals you can get out of it! Of course there are wonderful things like beef sandwiches made with the rare eye form the middle, curry made with slow cooked chunks from the top and the bits from between the ribs, broth made from the ribs themselves gently simmered with whatever other flavours you fancy, and maybe a few bits of pasta dropped in for good measure, but for me the very best way of using it up is to make lots and lots of really good sugo.

Now the recipe bit. The trick with the left over beef is to mince it coarsely, and then to fry it hard in a little of the left over beef fat until it's almost getting crispy. Make sure at this point you don't overfill the pan and do it in batches if necessary. What happens is you create a wonderful texture in the meat. You might think it dries it out, but the next stage (after lightly frying the onions, celery and carrots separately and adding them in) where you add lots and lots of tinnned tomatoes, wine and herbs and then simmer for at least one and half hours (prefereably longer depending on quantity) gives the meat back it's tenderness, and gives a wonderful texture as well as rich dark flavour to the sugo. I always pot it up once it's cooled, and the freezer becomes a life saver after a long day in the office when you can just defrost a pot of sugo for two and be eating incredibly good bolognese in half an hour. Now that's my idea of an instant meal!

Fresh bread rools that I made for the left over eye - they make fantastic beef rolls for lunch in the office. If you've got a bread machine you can turn these things out ridiculously easily.