The Perfect Bolognese

My husband and I are celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary this weekend. When we got married we couldn’t afford the fun European honeymoon we wanted to take, so we decided to wait until we could afford it. Four years later Erik surprised me with a trip to Brussels. Why Brussels?

When I was in college, my roommate and her family let me tag along on one of their yearly trips to France and Belgium, and I am still so grateful. I had a wonderful time. Paris was big and shiny, the south of France was gorgeous and fragrant, but the highlight of the trip, for me at least, was Brussels. I felt an immediate connection with it.

When one thinks of Europe, one usually thinks of Paris or London or Amsterdam—the biggies. Brussels is kind of the forgotten middle child of European cities: it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles and reputation of, say, Amsterdam (wink wink), but it is no less beautiful, historic, and full of things to do. My first impression of Brussels was that it was like a mini Paris, and since I lived in Boston at the time—a mini New York to a lot of people—that was something I liked. Also, I found the Brussilians very friendly, especially compared to the fast-paced Parisians.

It also just so happens that Belgium is known for some of my favorite foods: chocolate, white beer, waffles, and frites. In fact, when Erik and I went for our honeymoon, we spent one whole day going toe-to-toe with our favorite foods: for every waffle mounded with glorious toppings that he ate, I ate a big paper cone full of frites and sauce. I think we managed five rounds.

It was cold while we were there—it was mid-March—and we did a lot of walking. As a result, we worked up some man-sized hungers. One night, as we were walking around Ixelles, looking for a friendly restaurant for dinner, we happened upon an adorable little restaurant whose name, unfortunately, I have long since forgotten. Erik ordered pasta with bolognese sauce; I ordered something with a cream sauce spiced with nutmeg . . . I can’t quite remember what it was. But no matter, because Erik’s dish was the bees’ knees, and the whole meal was exactly what we needed to rejuvenate us mid-vacation. In fact, we enjoyed the restaurant so much that we returned a few nights later for the same dishes.

I’ve never tried making bolognese sauce from scratch—it always seemed like it might be one of those complicated, whole-day sauces. The flavors in a good bolognese are divine, though, and finally I decided it was time to start re-creating that awesome dish we had in Brussels.

I found a recipe that looked pretty reasonable: it didn’t require spending all day stirring a big cauldron of meaty sauce, and it also didn’t call for veal, a meat I have some ethical issues with. My abhorrence of veal may mean I will never make a true bolognese, but so be it.

The sauce was really, really good. I went light on the nutmeg, as it’s not my favorite spice, especially in large quantities, but it was a great meat sauce. I paired it with rigatoni, and the big tubes of pasta perfectly trapped the meaty chunks.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to match the sauce we had in Brussels, but I’m not sure I’d want to. There was so much more to the bolognese we had there—it was the perfect weather, we were in the perfect restaurant, in the perfect city, and I was with my soul mate. That would be pretty hard to re-create.

Pasta with Bolognese Sauce