There is no dish called spaghetti bolognese. In Bologna, you eat the bolognese sauce with tagliatelle. Also, the sauce is really a dressing for the pasta. I've made bolognese many times over the years but I've never really done it from a recipe. I decided to go back to basics and go to a recipe book for the sauce. This is another recipe from Two Greedy Italians (p57), although I didn't have enough puree and I used slightly more crushed tomatoes.

I made the tagliatelle from scratch.

Bolognese sauce

- Extra virgin olive oil
- 1 onion finely chopped
- 500g beef mince (5 or 12% fat)
- 75g tomato puree
- 700g crushed tomatoes
- 100-150ml dry white wine

It's very simple. Gently soften the onion for five minutes in a large pan with the olive oil. Then add the mince, brown it and break it up well. Pour over the wine and let it cook off and evaporate. Then stir in the puree and the tomatoes. Mix it well, bring to the boil and simmer on a really low heat for two hours. You may need to add a bit of water occasionally, but it needs to be thick.

Make sure you use wine. Actually, you can put some in the dish as well... only kidding. I added half a teaspoon of sugar to cut through the acidity of the tomatoes and some salt and pepper.

And that's it. I made mine the night and reheated it for 25 minutes before dressing the pasta. I will get around to writing about homemade pasta at some point but that's for another day. Here is what the final product looked like:

The pasta cooked in about four minutes leaving it al dente. The sauce was great, well balanced and brought back memories of Bologna. I'm very happy with this. (And there is another portion for tomorrow.)

Kindly proofread by Matt at Isthmus Consulting.