Ida's Ragù Marchigiano Recipe

With a menu formed by multiple generations of family home cooking and an atmosphere of easy warmth and welcome, west London’s Ida restaurant is a beloved neighbourhood cornerstone. Opened by Simonetta Wenkert and her husband Avi in 2007 and named after Avi’s mother, on whose recipes many of the restaurant’s dishes are still based today, Ida takes a personal approach to feeding people – where food and family history entwine. One of the restaurant’s most classic dishes is Ragù Marchigiano, from Ida’s native region of the Marche in Italy, with a recipe outlined by Simonetta below.

"A note before you begin. The recipe calls for a mixture of minced beef and pork, plus chopped chicken hearts and gizzards. Should any of these ingredients prove difficult to source, 100% minced beef or 100% minced pork also works, though it is no longer a Ragù Marchigiano at this point. Finally, the recipe serves 12, but the ragù lasts for at least five days in the fridge in a sealed container, and also freezes well."

Ingredients
(Serves 12)

1kg meat, ideally in the following proportions:
600g coarsely-ground beef (not less than 5% fat);
200g minced pork (Italian plain 100% pork sausages could make up part of this, or even entirely replace the minced pork);
100g gizzards, cut into 1cm cubes (Ask your butcher to clean them, and check for yellow membrane or fragments of grain or stones which must be removed);
100g chicken hearts, cut into quarters. 2 medium carrots, peeled
4 sticks celery
2 medium onions, peeled
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 fresh bay leaves
150g tomato purée
800g blitzed tinned plum tomatoes (or Passata)
500ml red wine
salt and pepper
200ml extra virgin olive oil

Method

Cut the carrots, celery and onion into approximately half-centimetre dice, known in Italian as soffritto.

Pour the oil into a heavy-bottomed pot, with a capacity of at least 8 litres, the wider the better.

Add the chopped vegetables and the whole garlic cloves.

Cook at medium heat for around 15 minutes, making sure that the soffritto doesn’t brown, stirring every now and then with a wooden spatula.

Add the chopped gizzards and hearts. Turn up the heat and cook for around 10 minutes, making sure they don’t stick or burn.

Add 10 twists of ground pepper or around 2 level tsp of pre-ground pepper.

Add the minced pork and beef and break up with the wooden spatula or a large whisk, alternately thumping and stirring so as not to 'purée' the meat.

Cook for a further ten minutes, regularly checking for clumps, and that the meat is colouring in a uniform manner.

When you can hear it sizzle and you can feel it beginning to catch, this means that most of the liquid has evaporated. At this point, add the wine and stir, scraping any residue from the bottom of the pan.

When you no longer smell the alcohol in the wine, add 4 level tsp of salt, as well as the tomato purée and stir constantly, until fully amalgamated, for three or four minutes.

Add the blitzed tinned tomatoes or Passata, and stir.

Wait for it to boil, turn down the heat and cover so that it barely simmers.

Use a heat diffuser if you have one, or, alternatively, you could place the Ragù directly on top of a large iron frying pan which will prevent it from burning

Cook for at least two hours, stirring occasionally.

The ragù is ready when you see reddish slicks of oil floating on the surface.



Read our interview with Ida’s Simonetta Wenkert and Fiammetta Reichenbach here