Ragù napoletano

In Naples, ragù is the sauce for Sunday. You start preparing it the day before, because meat and tomatoes need time to become ragù.

On Sunday mornings at home, the smell of ragù would fill the house even before the coffee did. That aroma held the promise of a lovely day with the family.

If you are mostly familiar with Bolognese, you will find something different here: the meat is cooked in pieces, slowly, in the tomato sauce. As it cooks, it becomes tender and lends its flavour to the sauce, which gradually thickens.

This coming together has always interested me. The tomatoes change, the flavour of the meat becomes part of the sauce, and as the hours pass, it becomes harder to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The recipe I make is rooted in my memories of Sundays as a teenager. It is that depth of flavour I want to share through my ragù in a jar: a rich, bold sauce whose flavour stays with you even after you have put down your fork.

I would choose it for a plate of pasta to enjoy without rushing. For me, that means dried pasta, always bronze-die, or fresh egg pasta. And I would keep a piece of bread within reach: with ragù, what is left on the plate deserves attention.