RECIPE—sugo

Sugo means juice in Italian, as well as sauce. More precisely, sugo is a meat sauce of chopped vegetables and ground meat, or larger pieces, pan-fried in butter or fat or oil and thereafter braised in liquid… slowly! The nice thing about sugos is that they get better one or two days after cooking. Close your eyes and imagine the smell of those beautiful aromas merging into an ever improving total flavour.

And sugo keeps for quite some time—frozen or cold—which makes it perfect for quick pasta meals for those with busy professional lives and limited kitchen time. Moreover, the same sugo would not necessarily induce a feeling of ...oh no, not again… if each subsequent meal were to be made unique with additional ingredients. The original sugo would then fuse the pasta—or rice, or Hong Kong noodles, or mashed potatoes, or polenta—to the new ingredient, which could be anything: a stir-fried vegetable or meat dish, or mushrooms sautéed with bacon strips, or sausages.

My favourite sugo is prepared the following way.

Ingredients:

Fresh tomatoes                500 g (canned whole or chopped tomatoes may be substituted).
Stewing steak                   250 g, cut into cubes of 2 cm or smaller
Onion                                  one large, chopped small
Garlic                                   3-5 cloves, peeled and crushed
Back bacon                        6 slices, chopped
Olive oil                              30 ml (2 tbsp)
Salt                                       to taste
Ground black pepper     to taste
Dried chilli flakes             5 ml (1 tsp)
Oregano (dried)              5 ml (1 tsp)

Preparation:

Using a suitably sized casserole, or Dutch oven, fry the onion in the oil, medium heat.

When golden add the meat, let simmer for 5 minutes or till evenly browned.

Halve and quarter the tomatoes and add to the casserole, and add the chopped bacon.

Simmer for 5 minutes stirring occasionally.

Add the salt, the pepper and the chilli flakes.

Simmer on smallest heat using a heat-diffuser for 2-3 hours. Stir regularly and check the consistency—remember it is a sauce we are preparing and when too dry add water. The meat (depending on cut and quality) should have become an integral part of the sauce… if not: simmer longer!

Oregano is best added towards the end as its flavour is gradually lost during the cooking process.