Neapolitan Pasta alla Genovese is made with broken ziti and a beef and onion sauce cooked slowly for several hours. The onions break down during cooking to become the sauce for the pasta, while the beef can be served separately.
Peel the onions and slice them thinly. Peel the carrot, then finely chop it with the celery and parsley. Cut the beef into 4–5 large pieces, keeping them roughly the same size.
Put the lard in a large casserole and let it melt over low heat with the olive oil. Add the carrot, celery, and parsley and cook for a few minutes without letting them brown too much.
Add all the onions to the casserole, stir, and season with a little salt. Lightly crush the tomato and add it as well, then cover and cook over low heat. The amount of onion will look enormous at first, but it will soon begin to release water and reduce in volume.
Once the onions have started to soften, add the pieces of beef and settle them into the casserole. Cover again and cook over very low heat for at least 2 hours, stirring occasionally and keeping an eye on the bottom of the casserole.
Remove the lid and continue cooking slowly. The water released by the onions now needs to evaporate gradually. Stir more frequently as the sauce reduces, making sure the onions do not catch on the bottom.
Once the onions have almost completely broken down and there is no excess water left in the casserole, raise the heat slightly. Let the beef brown in the reduced cooking juices, turning the pieces to color them on different sides. Add the white wine in two additions, allowing the first to almost completely evaporate before pouring in the second.
Return the heat to low and continue cooking until the onions have formed a uniform sauce and the beef is tender. Taste and adjust the salt. Remove the beef from the casserole and keep it warm; you can serve it separately.
Break the ziti into shorter lengths and cook them in boiling salted water. Drain while still al dente, reserving a little pasta water, then transfer them directly to the casserole with the Genovese. Toss over the heat so the sauce coats the pasta well, adding just a little pasta water only if needed.
Serve the ziti well coated with the Genovese. If you like, finish with finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano. The beef left from making the sauce can be brought to the table afterwards as the second course.
Servings 4
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily value may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
The onions are the most important part of Genovese, and they need enough time to release and slowly lose their water. There is no need to add stock: at the beginning, the onions themselves provide the liquid needed for cooking. Check the casserole from time to time, though, and stir more frequently once the sauce begins to reduce, as this is when it is most likely to catch on the bottom.
Keep the beef in large pieces and cook it until tender without shredding it into the sauce. Once ready, you can remove it from the casserole and serve it separately as the second course, leaving the onions to dress the ziti.
Do not rush the final stage. Before adding the wine, let the remaining moisture evaporate and allow the beef to brown in the reduced cooking juices. Add the wine in two additions, waiting until the first has almost evaporated before adding the second.
Parmigiano Reggiano is optional. Taste the pasta first: Genovese already has plenty of flavor and can be served without cheese.
The name still causes confusion, but Genovese is Neapolitan. How it ended up with that name is another matter: there are several stories, but no certain answer.
The best-known one takes us back to fifteenth-century Naples and the Genoese who frequented its port. Sailors, and perhaps cooks, are said to have prepared meat with large quantities of onions.
Naples, in any case, claimed Genovese as its own a long time ago. It belongs to the city's cooking tradition and is now included among Campania's PAT (Prodotti Agroalimentari Tradizionali), or Traditional Agri-Food Products.
What sets Genovese apart is the sheer amount of onion and the long cooking time. The onions are not there simply to accompany the beef: over several hours they lose their structure and become the sauce itself.
Beef and onions are at the heart of the dish, but the base also includes lard, carrot, celery, and parsley, along with olive oil and white wine during cooking. Then there is a less obvious detail: the traditional version recognized in Campania also includes one or two Piennolo tomatoes. It is little more than a touch, certainly not enough to turn Genovese into a tomato sauce.
There is one detail that says a lot about the kind of cooking this dish comes from. The onion sauce is used to dress the pasta, while the beef that has cooked in it is traditionally served separately.
One preparation therefore gives you both the first and second course. For the pasta, one of the shapes most closely associated with the Neapolitan tradition is broken ziti, which catch the sauce inside as well as out.