Return to Borgo

As part of our honeymoon last year, Glenn & I stayed at Borgo Argenina, a small B&B in the Chianti region of Tuscany. One of the highlights was one dinner where we dined family-style with the other guests and the Elena the owner, cooked us a homemade meal. The food was amazing, the hostess was gracious and the other guests were...entertaining. Elena sent us home with a collection of her favorite recipes and last week, we decided to try it out.

We learned that 1) The KitchenAid pasta attachment is not useful -- there's no way to separate all the strands! 2) Rolling out spaghetti by hand requires patience and skill 3) There's nothing like the smell of a slow-cooked sauce to warm up the house.

We bought some semolina, followed the package instructions an then attempted to use the KitchenAid to form the spaghetti. After we aborted from the KitchenAid, I rolled out the dough by hand. Cutting the strands of pasta was relatively easily, but once the pasta was cooked, it was clear I hadn't rolled the dough out thinly enough.

For the meat sauce, we followed one of Elena's recipes, but had to use our own interpretation a few times, as it seemed some details were lost in translation.


Ragu Napoletano

• 6 pork sausages (we used sweet Italian), casings removed and crumbled
• 2 onions, diced
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 1 small chili pepper, minced
• 28oz peeled whole tomatoes
• 3/4 c. olive oil
• 1 c. red wine
• 2 tbsp butter

Heat olive oil & butter in a large saucepot with the onion, garlic and chili pepper. Stir until browned (about 10-15 mins). Add the sausage and cook until lightly browned. Slowly add the red wine and cook until the wine evaporates.

Next, add the tomatoes. Simmer sauce for 2 hours, stirring occasionally (we attempted for every 10 mins or so).

The end result was amazing, but next time, I'd use 1/2 c. olive oil (the original recipe actually called for 1 cup!), crumble the pork more and possibly use another 8oz of tomatoes. Still, it was fantastic and made great leftovers!