The magic of ragu’ (or ragout)

How to prepare a juicy and super tasty ragu’ to warm up your evening

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Ragout (ragu’ in Italian) in the making: Sunday is for slow cooking, and batch prepping for the upcoming week.

A little bit of onion, celery and carrot, good olive oil, 5% fat minced beef and some tomatoes, slowly cooking for at least two hours to release all the juices and become soft and tasty…and ready for all the pasta for next week.

Preparation is key in everything: when you have some spare time it saves you time later if you prepare a big casserole of ragout, so that even when you are late from work you have some satisfying and nourishing 15mins pasta ready to eat!

It’s a simple trick and it doesn’t mean you have to eat the same food over and over for the entire week: you can freeze part of the ragout and defrost it later in the week, or use it to stuff zucchini or other vegetables, or to add to hand-made pasta (possibly linguine or tagliatelle not too slick so they can retain the ragout better), or even to use as a bruschetta topper, super yummy.

Preparation is everything, and you better get organized when you have time, because this is not always the case during the work week!

One dish to eat them all

Salmon and zucchini hand-made pasta

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A super-easy nourishing smoked salmon and zucchini hand-made pasta.

I made this one evening few weeks ago, satisfying and tasty, one dish to eat them all!

Sometimes I go back from work quite late in the evening, exhausted by a long day of problems, decisions to make in a rush with very little information, too “peoply” environment and multiple deadlines every day.

By the time I commute back home, one hour on the tube, I am starving and soooo tempted to reach for my beloved patatine (potato chips) and a drink.

Some evenings I surrender to the call of the trash chips, but most of the times it takes me 10 to 15 minutes to put together a delicious and satisfying dish with a few basic ingredients: this one was done with healthy eggs hand-made pasta (store-bought of course), some smoked salmon from the fridge and a bit of sauteed zucchini, salt, olive oil and a bit of pepper and voila’…dinner is ready and my gut is happy as a clam!

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