Recipe: Beef and Pork Ragu from Bar Benevento
Brothers Anthony and Julian Izzillo – owners of Sydney’s original wine bar, de Vine Food and Wine – bring southern Italian coffee and pasta bar to the CBD with the opening of Bar Benevento.
The siblings behind acclaimed former restaurant Wildfire – have teamed up with respected cafe operator Kosta Papanikitas to create an alimentari-inspired space, where espressos at the bar with strangers are both welcomed and encouraged.
Named after the small Campanian city of Benevento where the brothers’ father was born, Bar Benevento is a deeply personal project, drawing on the traditions and memories passed down through their family.
“Our nonno came to Australia from Benevento in 1953, post war, and spent five years working and saving before he could bring our nonna, dad and uncle over,” Julian Izzillo says.
Old-school weekly pasta specials lead the lunch menu, alongside tasty plates like chicken cotoletta, panini and a selection of stuzzichini, meats and cheeses. Fisher says he hasn’t tried to reinvent Campanian food, instead it’s been about finding unexpected ways to make its familiar flavours feel new.
“We’ve tried to create hero dishes that haven’t been done in Sydney before, whether that’s boiling and baking our taralli like a bagel so it’s soft and warm for dipping, or swapping coffee for wild mint and saffron Strega in our tiramisu,” he says.
Here is the duo’s delicious Rigatoni beef & pork ragu recipe to make at home!
Rigatoni beef & pork ragu
Ingredients:
- 150ml Olive oil
- 500g Wagyu beef mince
- 500g Pork mince
- 40g salt
- 1 carrot, finely-diced
- 1 stick celery, finely-diced
- 1 large onion, finely-diced
- 3 cloves garlic, finely-diced
- 2 bay leaves
- 150ml drinkable red wine
- 2 medium cans of whole-peeled tomatoes
- 1 bunch rosemary
- 320g Rigatoni pasta
- 100g Parmesan, grated
- 80g Caciocavallo
Method:
- Place on high heat a heavy-based pot with half the amount of oil, add the beef, pork and 20g of salt and cook until golden. Set aside.
- On medium heat, add the rest of the oil to a pot, sweat the vegetables and bay leaves with 20g salt, cook for approximately 20 mins without colour, adjust heat when necessary, then add red wine and reduce the wine by 1/3.
- Add the cooked meat to the sorfritto mixture (vegetables).
- Add 2 medium cans of whole-peeled tomatoes and 2 cans of water, bring to the boil and then turn it to a simmer and cook for a minimum of 3 hours (5 is preferred but you may need to add more water).
- After it’s cooked, remove from the heat and steep the rosemary in the ragu, then leave to cool so it can infuse into the ragu (if you like your ragu with a more tomato taste, you can add another can of tomatoes).
- Boil 3 litres of water with 20g salt and cook the rigatoni or your pasta of choice (do it for 2 minutes less than the packet tells you to).
- Once cooked, add the pasta to the sauce with some pasta water, cook for 1 minute so the sauce coats all the pasta, then add the parmesan cheese and caciocavallo, mix well and serve. If you can not find caciocavallo, leave it out.
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