Fettuccine al Ragù Bianco
Ragù existed in this country long before the tomato did, and this is closer to what it would have tasted like -- meat, wine, milk, and time, with nothing red anywhere in the pot. My father makes this more often than the Sunday version when it's just the family eating, and keeps the difference mostly to himself around customers who'd be confused by a ragù with no tomato in it at all.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 medium yellow onion, finely diced
- 2 carrots, finely diced
- 2 celery stalks, finely diced
- 150g pancetta, finely diced
- 500g coarse-ground beef
- 300g ground pork
- 1½ cups dry white wine
- 2 cups good beef or chicken broth, kept warm
- 1½ cups whole milk, warmed
- Salt and black pepper
- Whole nutmeg, for grating
- Fresh fettuccine and grated Parmesan, to serve
Serves 6–8.
Cookware Required
- una pentola pesante (a heavy pot)
- un cucchiaio di legno (a wooden spoon)
- un mestolo (a ladle, for the broth)
Method
Build the soffritto exactly as you would for the Sunday version -- butter and oil, then onion, carrot, and celery, cooked slowly for fifteen minutes until soft and sweet without taking on color. Add the pancetta, and let it render for five minutes more.
Raise the heat, add the beef and pork, and break them apart until they've lost their pink, about five minutes. Pour in the wine, and let it bubble hard until you can no longer smell the alcohol.
This is where the recipe parts ways with its tomato cousin. Turn the heat down low, and begin adding the warm broth a ladle at a time, waiting for each addition to mostly absorb before adding the next, the same patient way you'd build a risotto. This replaces the moisture the tomato would otherwise provide, and keeps the sauce from drying out over its long simmer. Continue this way, mostly covered, for three hours, stirring occasionally.
In the last thirty minutes, stir in the warm milk, just as you would for the Sunday ragù -- it does the same quiet work here, rounding off the wine's sharper edges. Season with salt, pepper, and a little nutmeg at the end. Serve over fettuccine, with plenty of Parmesan.
Quando Va Storto
If the sauce dries out and starts sticking to the pot partway through cooking, you weren't generous enough with the broth, or added it too infrequently; without tomato's liquid to fall back on, this sauce depends entirely on you replacing that moisture by hand. If it tastes thin rather than rich, it needed more time, or more reduction between broth additions, to properly concentrate. And if it tastes flat despite everything else going right, you skipped the milk at the end, thinking a sauce with no tomato had no sharp edge left to round off -- it does, from the wine, and the milk still matters just as much here.