🧅 Pasta alla genovese

Pasta alla genovese is a Neapolitan dish: pasta dressed with a thick, amber sauce made from a large quantity of onions cooked for hours with a piece of beef. The Accademia Italiana della Cucina gives the salsa genovese in two versions, a Neapolitan one ("all'uso di Napoli", Campania) and one from Molise. Neither list of ingredients includes tomato or basil.

Neapolitan version, for six people: 1 kg of beef lacerto (girello), 1.5 kg of onions, two celery stalks, three carrots, two glasses of dry white wine, a glass of extra virgin olive oil, 100 g of lard, 50 g of lardo, 50 g of butter, salt and pepper. Onions, celery, carrots and lardo are finely chopped and put in a casserole with the butter, lard and oil; the tied meat is browned and the wine is added gradually and allowed to evaporate. Then a glass of water goes in, the pot is covered and everything simmers on very low heat for at least three hours, until the meat is very tender, the vegetables have turned to a cream and the sauce is thick and amber. The meat is served as the second course, while the sauce dresses pasta or rice with grated Parmigiano. The recipe does not name a pasta shape.

Molise version, for four people: 1 kg of copertella (also called biancostato), a few nervetti, 50 g of cured pork (prosciutto), ½ dl of extra virgin olive oil, 1 kg of onions, a piece of celery, a small carrot, a sprig of parsley, a glass of dry white wine and salt. The vegetables and meat are browned in oil, the wine is added gradually, then everything simmers for about two hours and a glass of warm water is added to finish. The Accademia recommends it with zitoni (broken "candele"), paccheri, or fresh egg tagliatelle and crioli, with plenty of Parmesan, and states that the Molise genovese descends from the well-known Neapolitan dish of the Aragonese period (15th century).