sausage ragu

make it nice :)

What I’m reading: the latest Substack post from John and Sally McKenna, this one on Irish bakeries

What I’m listening to: Cher on Desert Island Discs

What I’m eating: the sticky cinnamon bun at Fortitude Bakehouse (below)

The recipe this week is, somewhat unusually, a savoury dish - and one that I make quite regularly for myself on my days off. I like to make a big batch of this sausage ragu and freeze any leftovers, to be defrosted and whipped up into a quick dinner on nights off when I don’t feel like cooking, which is pretty much all the time. One of the sad things about cooking for a living is that you rarely get to make something purely for personal enjoyment. When you spend all week cooking in a professional kitchen, and often doing laborious jobs (large quantities of fish, meat and veg prep), I personally find that the last thing I want to do is come home and crack out the chopping board - largely because of the clean-up at the end. This dish, however, is worth putting a little time into, and you can reap the rewards for several days after (longer if you freeze the leftovers).

I make this ragu in a way that might be completely unconventional by Italian cooking standards. In my defence, I have no training in Italian cooking, bar a few joyous weeks helping out at Canteen in Notting Hill, which is conveniently located in the same building as my current job. The principles, though, are straightforward. The trick is to incorporate as much flavour as possible in every step, and to only add things that are going to make it more delicious. I’ll never forget the first time I was told to “make it nice” in a professional kitchen. I was working in my first proper kitchen job at Moro in Exmouth market, and was tasked with making a Romesco sauce - which I had barely heard of, let alone made before. I panicked (obviously) and ran to the bathroom for a quick Googling session. As I started to cook, one of the senior chefs came over (probably sensing my anxiety from the far side of the kitchen), and gave me some basic pointers, before saying, “just make it nice”.

Now, when I get told to “make it nice”, I rarely panic (although not never, I’m only human), and only sometimes jump on Google. With savoury dishes, there is so much more scope to cook intuitively, and to rectify any little mistakes you might make along the way. The same doesn’t usually go for baking, as measurements, quantities and temperatures tend to be much more precise.

“Make it nice” is something that I hear a lot in kitchens, and it’s actually pretty good advice. If you have a background in cooking, or even an interest in food, you know how to make things taste good. If you taste as you go, you’ll figure out whether you need to add more salt, sweetness, acid or heat, and similarly whether you need to add more liquid or reduce it to remove some of the liquid. The same goes with plating or even making a sandwich: you know exactly how you would like it to taste and be presented, and it shouldn’t be that different when you’re cooking for other people.

With this ragu, you build flavour as you go: you need to brown the sausage meat for those lovely crispy caramelised nuggets, some of which will stick to the bottom of the pan, and be deglazed by the wine later on. The flavour base comes from the soffrito or mirepoix of onion, garlic, celery and carrot. Aromatics like the hard herbs and parmesan rind need to be added early enough to infuse their flavour into the sauce, while softer herbs can be added later. I prefer using tinned plum tomatoes because you can control how much liquid you add and how chunky the tomatoes are (it’s best to get your hands dirty and squeeze them in your fingers - but make sure you’re not wearing white). The simmering stages are also important: unlike other ragus which involve slow cooking, the meat in this ragu is already cooked after the very first stage. So you don’t need to simmer it for hours, and I actually prefer a short half-hour simmer with the lid off to reduce the sauce a little and allow the flavours to mingle.

This is a very customisable recipe, which you can tweak in any ways you see fit. Just don’t forget to make it nice :)

recipe: sausage ragu