Annalisa De Carlo
2 October 2025
In a farmhouse kitchen above Greve in Chianti, we learned what slow-cooked actually means. This recipe is our attempt to bring that kitchen home to you.
The kitchen was on the ground floor of a stone farmhouse that had been in the family since before anyone living could remember. There were two chairs, a table worn smooth by generations of elbows, a gas cooker with one slightly temperamental burner, and Signora Moretti — seventy-four years old, sharp eyes, the kind of arms that come from decades of kneading dough.
She had been making this ragù since she was nine, standing on a step stool beside her own grandmother. She did not use a recipe. She used judgement, patience, and a confidence in the process that no written instruction can convey. What follows is our best attempt to translate what we observed into something reproducible in an Australian kitchen.
It will not be identical to hers. It cannot be. The pork she used was from a pig she knew by name. The wine came from the estate directly below the kitchen window. The herbs were from the garden twenty paces from the door. But the method — the long, unhurried, low-heat method — is the part that actually matters, and that you can reproduce.
Signora Moretti's Slow Ragù (serves 6–8, and improves the next day)
Ingredients
- 500g minced pork (not too lean — fat is flavour)
- 300g minced beef (ask your butcher for chuck, not mince labelled "lean")
- 150g pancetta, finely diced
- 1 large white onion, finely diced
- 2 celery stalks, finely diced
- 2 medium carrots, finely diced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 250ml dry red wine — a Chianti or Montepulciano works well
- 400g crushed tomatoes (canned, good quality — San Marzano if you can find them)
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 250ml full-cream milk
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 bay leaf, 2 sprigs fresh thyme, 1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley
- Sea salt, black pepper
Method
Heat the olive oil in a heavy-based pot — cast iron if you have it — over medium heat. Add the pancetta and cook until the fat renders and it begins to colour. Add the soffritto: onion, celery, and carrot. Cook very gently for fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally, until completely soft and translucent. Do not rush this. It is the foundation.
Add the garlic for two minutes, then increase the heat and add the mince in stages — do not crowd the pot. Brown properly on all sides until you have genuine caramelisation, not merely greyness. Season generously.
Pour in the wine and let it bubble furiously until completely evaporated — you want the alcohol gone, leaving only the flavour. Add the tomato paste and stir through for two minutes. Add the crushed tomatoes. Stir to combine.
Now: reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting. Add the bay leaf, thyme, and milk. The milk is not a modern addition or a shortcut — it softens the acidity of the tomatoes and gives the ragù its characteristic gentle richness. Signora Moretti would not omit it.
Cover loosely and cook for a minimum of two and a half hours, ideally three. Stir every thirty minutes. If it appears dry, add a small amount of water or stock. The finished ragù should be thick, dark, fragrant, and deeply savoury — not red, not wet.
Taste and adjust seasoning. Add the chopped parsley at the end.
Serving
Signora Moretti served it with pici — hand-rolled thick spaghetti made from nothing more than flour and water. In its absence, use a good egg pappardelle or rigatoni. The pasta shape matters: you want something that holds the sauce, not something fine and slippery.
Do not, under any circumstances, serve with anything other than good bread, a simple salad dressed with olive oil, and the kind of red wine that justifies cooking with. She served a 2019 Rosso di Montepulciano. We finished two bottles.
The honest conclusion of all food travel in Italy is this: the recipe is almost secondary to the context in which you eat it. Signora Moretti's ragù was extraordinary partly because of the technique, but mostly because we were eating it in the kitchen where it had been made for a hundred years, with the people who lived there, in October, with the smell of woodsmoke coming in through a cracked window. You will make a version of this at home and it will be good. Then, if you come to Tuscany with us in the right season, you will make it again with someone who knows things about cooking that no recipe has ever contained, and you will understand the difference.
