Uses: This should give you 6 portions of meat sauce but for my appetite it only gives me 4

Assembling the recipe:

In a heavy enameled pot put in the oil, butter, and onion and saute until translucent (or they loose their color). Then add the celery, and carrots and saute gently for a couple of minutes more.

Add the ground beef, salt and saute just until it looses it's raw color (you don't want to brown it at all). With a large fork toss the meat to break it up so that every little bit looses it color evenly.

Add the milk and nutmeg and gently boil until it has all evaporated. Stirring frequently.

Add wine and gently boil until it has all evaporated. Stirring frequently

When the wine has evaporated add the tomatoes, stir thoroughly. Add the bay leaf and garlic with the tomatoes. When the tomatoes come up a simmer turn down the heat and simmer very very gently for and not less than 3 1/2 hours and as much as 5 hours.

Fish out the bay leaf and the clove of garlic before serving or freezing.

Leave adjusting the salt to the very end, you might find you really need very little. I love my ground black pepper but I leave that for serving at the table with this recipe.

Pasta Information

This is a great recipe for a cold Sunday when the most you want to do is read a paper. You can substitute ground pork for beef or use half beef and pork but its then your special Bolongnese sauce and not a real authentic one but an excellent one in any case.

There are lots of things going on here and all of them are important if you are to get an authentic version of this Bolongnese specialty. I write these as rules because they are just that. For the meat go to your butcher and buy meat for this fresh. It should be a shoulder and/or neck cut beef ground.

You should use a heavy enamel pot with high sides to help slow the evaporation process as the sauce needs to be cooked for so long. You also need to deal with your electric stove which most of us have here. I use the smallest burner turned on number one for the long cooking part of this recipe. If it still boils which it shouldn't try using a diffuser. (remember like most of you I have the cheapest Electrolux stove ever made with almost zero options on it.)

Rule one - you are not going to color anything in this recipe. The celery and carrots will break down as the sauce cooks for such a long time. The carrots will add the desired sweet note to the sauce.

The meat must not be cooked! You are only going to remove the color from the ground beef. The more you cook it, the less you will come out with the creamy texture you are looking for in the end product. It will have plenty of time to cook with the tomatoes later so be patient and take your time with each step.

Add the milk (regular fat, red milk container for us in Sweden) and simmer it off but not too hard. Get a good simmer going not a boiling mass of milk and meat. Do the same when you add wine. Remember to stir the pot frequently while you are doing these steps.

Each addition imparts its own flavor and although you could leave out the wine I never would, it just doesn't taste the same.

You can easily triple this recipe only cut back a 1/2 a glass of wine and you will need a bit more salt in the end when you do the final tasting.

I never make just one of these recipes, I triple and quadruple it and then freeze it for dinners during the week. So considering all the time it takes, it is worth the effort as it gives me lots of meals while I am sitting around watching TV. It's a great family meal because it is really inexpensive and left overs are unheard of.

If you are reheating this from frozen put it in a small sauce pan just large enough for the frozen sauce with 2 msk or 2 tbls. of water and heat slowly taking care not to burn the sauce.

Two optional additions to the sauce are one bay leaf and one slightly crushed whole clove of garlic. You can add these when the tomatoes go into the pot. Even for a big pot of sauce I only use one bay leaf and one large clove of garlic. 3 1/2 to 5 hours is plenty of time to get what you want out of these two spices.

Serve this with fettuccini (tagliatelle) pappardelle lightly buttered (wide noodles) or tortellini with spinach and cheese stuffing.

This is the perfect sauce for lasagne and smaller boxed pasta such as penne, rigatoni (new to sweden) and orecchiette (little ears)