I was curious about this sauce and couldn’t really trace it back to its origin. I’m starting to wonder if it’s not local to Quebec, since most of the recipes I found for it seem to have emerged from here.
Turns out I wasn’t far off. While it descends from Italian ragù, brought over by Italian immigrants in the early-to-mid 1900s, Quebec took the recipe and made it its own — sweeter, thickened with tomato paste, and loaded with green peppers, celery, and sometimes even grated carrots, ingredients you won’t typically find in an Italian version. Food historians and cookbook authors now treat it as its own distinct tradition, right up there with poutine and tourtière as a defining Quebec comfort food
1536
.
In any case, it’s a delicious way to eat your pasta.
(Experiment 89) Alla gigi sauce
Ingredients
- 500 ml tomato sauce
- 3 tbsp minced basil
- 125 ml 35% cream heavy
- ~1/2 cup chopped lunch meat ham or capicollo
- 1 cup minced mushrooms
- 2 tbsp olive oil
Instructions
- Over medium heat, add olive oil and soften mushrooms. Add the meat and basil and cook for another minute.
- Pour over the tomato sauce and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Add the cream and wait until you have a nappe consistency. To check consistency, put a spatula in the sauce and run your finger on it, if you still see where you have run your finger you are done.
