Secret Sauce

Lasagna Bolognese

Secret Sauce

I consider myself so incredibly lucky to get the first look at some of the best cookbooks to be published each year (not that I’m biased). I sleep and breathe these books along with their authors, agents, publicists, and designers, and by the time they have spines and tables of contents, we know them like the backs of our hands. But they don’t just skitter across our desks: we cook from them too—not, as some assume, to methodically test the recipes (that’s done by the expert authors and their testers), but because after inhaling the scents on the page for months, they’re all we can think about come dinnertime.

This weekend I was feeding the in-laws before a big 10-mile race, and the main dish came together in bits: there was fresh pasta dough in the freezer, bison meat at the farmers’ market, and I happened to walk by the ricotta at the exact moment I was thinking of dinner. It was kismet, and lasagna. I won’t tell you everything about this lasagna (which is a riff on the Lasagna Bolognese from an insanely good book of restaurant staff meals out this fall: COME IN, WE’RE CLOSED: An Invitation to Staff Meals at the World’s Best Restaurants), but I would be remiss if I did not mention the best bolognese sauce to ever walk the earth. The secret is heavy cream, stirred in at the end: just a touch, and you’ll hardly even recognize it in its final form. It leaves behind a silky schmear, something you can’t quite place.

Red sauces hardly need a recipe, since so much is dependent on what you’re trying to use and what you like, but mine included a yellow onion, celery, carrots, ground bison, fresh garlic, canned San Marzano tomatoes, stock, wine, a sprig of thyme, and a bit of salt. Simmer it gently while you take a shower and ponder whether you have the forbearance to grow your pixie into a bob. That in-between stage is the pits. Check on the sauce: it should be becoming drier, but not sticking. The authors say it should “pile” on the spoon, rather than “pooling.” I almost forgot about the cream (just 1/4 cup for a good-sized batch of sauce) in my rush to assemble the dish, but thankfully for us—and you—I remembered, and it was a truly delicious meal.

-Kristen