Giusi's ragu

Slow and easy – long-simmered ragù is the quintessential Tuscan soul food. There are as many ways with ragù as there are cooks. This is ours, learned originally from Giusi, who’s made it a thousand times. By now, I think we have, too. On many Saturday mornings, Ed makes a huge pot of ragù – tripling, quadrupling the recipe – and another of tomato sauce. We consider these our natural resources. For lunch, while the pots are still on the stove, we spoon ragù over bruschetta, add some cheese, and run it under the grill. By afternoon, we’re ready to fi ll several glass containers of different sizes and freeze them. We’re then free to pull one out during the workweek. Serve ragù in lasagne or over spaghetti and, as you eat, you know you’re participating in a communal rite that’s being enacted all over the Italian peninsula.