BONUS November - Ragù alla Genovese + Pumpkin Galette + Whipped Ricotta with Smoked Tomatoes

Surprise, surprise, we have more comfort food. A very exciting ragù, a seasonal tart, and a rather lovely dip.

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Here you will find a particularly frugal ragù recipe, a dead easy tart, and a BRAND NEW SECTION dedicated to nibbles to cook up when you have people round for dinner. Not only that, but I’ll be telling you about my favourite spots for a roast in London (that aren’t my house/my parent’s house), my love for cheese & onion crisps and the scoop on where I buy my plates.

Recipes

Ragu alla Genovese 

This summer, my parents were trying to return home from a holiday in Spain when their flight got diverted to Naples. They then couldn’t get a flight home for 4 days, leaving them stranded in the city (get out those tiny violins). They very much turned lemons into lemonade though, and spent the next few days sampling all the delicacies that Naples had to offer. My dad very excitedly told me about a dish he’d eaten called Ragù alla Genovese, which I’m ashamed to say I’d never heard of until that moment. He described it as a ragù with very little beef in it, and lots and lots of onion. This is a man who eats a lot of ragù, but he said this was one of the best variations he’d ever tried. I knew that I had to figure out how to make it for him, so here we are.

Weirdly, the dish gets its name from Genoa, the Northern Italian province (a little way away from Naples), though the reasons for this are disputed. Some say that it was brought down to Naples by immigrants from the area; others say that Genovese was the surname of its inventor. I’ve even had someone tell me that it is called Genovese as people from this area of Italy are known to be stingy (I cannot comment on this - that would be a bit rude), and the ingredients are so cheap that it warrants this name.

No matter the reasons for its name. The method is fascinating. The recipe is really interesting, because it contains double the quantity of onions than of beef. Yes, DOUBLE! This is going to feel like an aggressive amount of onions, but trust the process. They cook down to create an onion-y stock that braises the meat and minimal veg to create something pretty magical. The result is a sweet ragù that costs next to nothing to cook, and it is a real treat to eat.

You would traditionally eat this with ziti (long, wide pasta tubes), but this can be hard to find in the UK. In its absence, rigatoni or paccheri will do the job.