Bolognese sauce was a revelation for me the first time I tasted it. Silky and slightly sweet from the slow cooking, it was so different from the full tomato (infused with shredded carrots and sauteed ground beef) that I grew up on. I got my first taste of Bolognese sauce while cooking my way through Marcella Hazan's Classic Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking cookbook that I rescued from the "books to throw out" (can you imagine...) pile while working at Borders many years ago. The book looks like it went through a major apocalypse with its stained pages and markings. I have since adapted the recipe to be much more vegetable based and came up with an equally delicious sauce using lentils in place of the meat and giving a meaty undertone by using pancetta as my cooking fat. I have served atop polenta, stirred into risotto, pasta, made a pizza from it, and eaten it directly from the cooking vessel with a spoon. Any which way, it is delicious.

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