Tony Soprano's Own Neapolitan Ragų

Keywords:	Pasta ¦ Italian Cuisine ¦ Traditional ¦ Neapolitan Cuisine ¦ Ragų (Italian meat sauce)
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In my previous article you read how I convinced Pasquale, my Italian-Swiss media-room specialist, to come and fix my DVD player the next day instead of next month with a promise of real ragų napoletano and homemade maccheroni. I took yesterday's ragų out from the fridge to let it simmer it a further 4 hours.

With my beloved Kenwood kitchen machine I made 6 eggs' worth of maccheroni rigati, the ones with the large holes and deep groves designed for the sauce to stick.

Pasquale arrived bang on time and asked to see the simmering ragų. He nodded when seeing the rich, shiny dark color bubbling in the pot. Being a man of honor, Pascuale then moved to the media room where he wrestled the recalcitrant amplifier for a good hour before anything changed. ŦThe Amplifier stopped talking with the DVD playerŧ, he explained. After an hour I saw some light on the screen, and then bang, here was Tony Soprano.

ŦI'm going to boil the pastaŧ, I told him.

My homemade maccheroni are cooked in about 60 seconds and due to the durum wheat semolina, they have a lot of bite or al dente as they say in Italy.

I decided to add a little flavor boost by finishing my sauce like mezzanelli lardiati. I used lardo di Colonatta, a cult bacon prepared near the marble quarries in the North of Italy, by seasoning big slabs of white pig fat with garlic, salt and herbs and then leaving them in white marble boxes for months. It is entirely white and extremely tasty although clearly a non-Italian must wonder how the hell you are supposed to eat it. Here is how.

Finely chop a small onion and the bacon, taking care to remove the skin and any excess salt.

Fry in a saucepan until the onion has lost its water and the bacon rendered its fat.

You will obtain a beige fatty puddle with the most delicate porky smell.

Add your ragų with a ladle. Only use ragų you will eat tonight.

Add some of the pasta cooking water to the ragų to thin it down a bit and mix (photo).

Spoon the ragų lardiato ('baconed meat sauce') over the hot pasta...

... sprinkle with grated Parmesan or Caciocavallo and decorate with a basil leaf.

Pascuale was happy and I managed to have my media room fixed in 2 days instead of 2 weeks, thanks to the timeless ragų napoletano.

The Sopranos is a mafia fiction invented by psycholanalyed screenwriters with jewish mothers to project their fantasies. But they did a fair amount of gastronomic research into the Neapolitan origins of their characters who would very much enjoy this ragų napoletano. But who would have them for dinner?.