The Dark Side of the Spoon

Before we get round to the proper recipe sections, I thought it would be a nice idea just to run through a few seminal, formative, all time favourites. The following recipes are all old, some are positively ancient, and I still use all of them today. I also must admit that most of them are other people’s, some tweaked a little over the years, others left untouched. I will drop these into the proceedings intermittently, which will give you a chance to try them one by one rather than trying to make your mind up which to do first. If these recipes were a football team they’d be Real Madrid, hence the title.

Without further ado, let’s get going with number 1, our goalkeeper

BOLOGNESE SAUCE

This is one of my earliest food memories. I can’t rmemeber exactly when my Mam first cooked it for me, but it was in the times when spaghetti could only be bought in delicatessens, and it came in long, long, long blue paper packets almost as tall as me. It was always a great comfort food, and it was a regular Friday night tea when I came home from boarding school for the weekend. Purists will no doubt beat their brows on reading this one, as strictly speaking it isn’t Bolognese, just a meat ragu, but bollocks to them.

There are few smells more enticing than a slowly simmering pot of Bolognese, and indeed slow is the key here. There is nothing wrong with knocking up a quick version in forty minutes, but something happens to a Bolognese around the two hour mark, giving it an elusive smokiness and colour. I usually cook it for about three hours, and this is what I do..

500g minced beef

1 large onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

1 stick celery, chopped

2 mushrooms, choopped small

2 rashers smoked bacon, chopped

2tbs mixed herbs

2 bay leaves

1tsp grated nutmeg

2 beef Oxo cubes

2tbs tomato puree

1 tin chopped tomatoes

pinch of sugar

salt/peppera g

a good slug of red wine, or white

In a generous but not excessive amount of olive oil, sweat down the onion, carrot, garlic and celery until soft, about 20 minutes. Add the bacon and mushrooms and saute for another few minutes. Then add the beef and saute till well browned. Next add the wine, the seasonings and the tomato puree and mix well, finally chucking in the tin of tommytoes. Bring to the boil, then turn down low and cover, leaving it to look after itself for at least two hours. All you need to do is check the liquid, but this sauce should not be runny. Like I say, three hours will do it no harm at all.

Serve with spaghetti dressed in butter, black pepper and a bit of chopped flatleaf parsley, along with copious amounts of garlic bread. I’ve tasted it, it’s the future (apologies to P. Kaye).

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Thyme. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.