In our What’s Cooking series, Canadians in the food world share their favourite at-home recipes: the easy, delicious—even occasionally healthy!—meals that they go back to again and again. On today’s menu: Alida Solomon’s Tagliatelle with Sugo Bugiardo.

 

Chef Alida Solomon is the chef and owner of Toronto’s Tutti Matti and is also currently a chef judge on Wall of Chefs. Since her restaurant’s opening in 2002, it has been hailed by critics and received both local and national awards. Alida also lived in Montalcino, Tuscany, for six years, where she worked at the hilltop restaurant Boccon di Vino, earning it Michelin recognition. Alida is sharing her best pasta sauce recipe for Sugo Bugiardo because of its colourful history: “It’s known as the liar’s sauce because it’s what butchers would make when they would have to sell most of the meat and take home only a little. Like so many other Italian classics, it started out as a peasant dish. To me this recipe represents Italians’ ability to make something wonderful out of very little but the freshest and most flavourful ingredients. This sauce can be done from a little animal protein or none at all, by using flavourful vegetables such as fennel, mushrooms, carrots, artichokes and finished with a can of tomatoes.”

 

Hunt’sAlida Solomon’s Tagliatelle with Sugo Bugiardo: “To me this recipe represents Italians’ ability to make something wonderful out of very little but the freshest and most flavourful ingredients.”

 

TAGLIATELLE WITH SUGO BUGIARDO RECIPE

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

  • 4 carrots, peeled
  • 6 stalks celery
  • 2 red onions, peeled
  • 1/4 cup (60 mL) extra virgin olive oil
  • 12 smashed garlic cloves
  • 1 lb (450 g) ground Italian sausage
  • 1 cup (235 mL) white wine
  • 2 cans (398 mL each) Hunt’s Heirloom crushed tomatoes
  • 16 0z (450 g) fresh tagliatelle (or your favourite pasta)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Finely chop or purée the carrots, celery, and onion to make your soffrito.

2. In a pot, add olive oil and sauté the garlic with your Soffrito until translucent.

2. Add ground sausage and brown alongside your vegetables.

3. Deglaze with white wine, and then add canned tomatoes.

4. Lower heat and simmer, stirring occasionally for one hour.

5. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Cook pasta until al dente, and then combine with sauce to serve.

 

ALIDA’S KITCHEN ESSENTIALS

What are your three essential pantry ingredients?

“Good canned tomatoes, capers and chicken stock. These items can be used for pasta, soup, stews and roasting. They can live in your pantry and offer endless recipes including caponata, which is one of my vegetarian favourites with capers and tomato.”

What’s your favourite kitchen tool?

“My mini chopper attachment on my hand blender, which I use for sofritto (carrot, celery and onion) regularly.”

What’s your favourite cookbook?

“First, The River Café Cookbook by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray. They opened The River Café 30 years ago cooking Italian-inspired food that taught me about authenticity to product. Second, The Artusi written by Artusi Pellagrini in the early 1800s (contemporarily known as Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well). It was the first Italian formal recipe book with ingredients and method but not measurements. A classic and must-have book.”

What’s your favourite food scene in a movie?

“The opening of scenes of Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman. The first 15 minutes of this brilliant movie show a banquet chef cooking at home on a Sunday for his three daughters. It is one of the greatest, truest scenes of a chef at home doing what he loves for who he loves, almost like meditation or yoga. Cooking is his therapy, his passion, his life.”

If you had to eat one condiment to stick to for the rest of your life, what would it be?

“I love our red pepper jelly and onion marmalade at Tutti Matti.”

 

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