Ragu (Italian meat sauce)

Origin: little old lady in Ferrara, Italy ... hence the really vague amounts.
Serves: 3-4 people

Ingredients:

A small amount of grated carrot
Some sliced up onion
Olive oil
Ground beef or mix of ground beef and ground pork (around 300 grams for this serving size)
Tomato pulp of appropriate density for sauce
White wine or milk (very small amount)
Salt to taste
Seasonings like oregano or basil to taste


Directions:

1. Cut up onion and carrot finely. The traditional flavor doesn't have very strong onion taste, but you can add it to taste. For a large batch (ie: Sunday Night Dinner), 2 small onions and 8 carrots is reasonable.
2. Cook meat pretty thoroughly (might take around 5 minutes for the original small size batch, would be longer for enough sauce for a large group to eat) in a frying pan, or for a multiplied batch, in the pot in which you will want to cook the sauce.
3. When the meat is well cooked, remove it from the pan/pot and drain out some of the oily juice.
4. Heat up on low-medium heat a small amount of olive oil (around 2 tablespoons for the small serving size, more obviously for a large group), and sautee the onion and carrot
5. Add tomato pulp to the sautee, then add half of a small glass of white wine and/or milk and mix in thoroughly.
6. Add the meat back to the sauce, as well as salt, and any green seasonings desired like basil or oregano, all to taste.
7. Cook on a low flame until the liquid is almost gone. You want it be more like meat coated in sauce rather than floating in it. You'll know when it's done (according to Ferrarese style) not only when there is little liquid left, but when you can see a slight sheen of the oil on the meat. Add a little bit more oil or cold butter so it doesn't become too dry. When mixed thoroughly, it is ready to serve.

When made for Sunday Night Dinner, we used about 5 pounds of ground beef, 2 onions, ~8 carrots and 3 large cans of tomato.