NORTHERN PLANNER

There’s nothing wrong with bolognese – or should I say, GOOD bolognese. It’s popular because it’s simple, cheap and very tasty. What’s not to like?

Now this recipe is quick version that tastes utterly slow. Another time, we’ll do a brilliant, slow cooked meat sauce that’s the basis for chilli, mousakka and even a left – field version meatballs (meatballs,must do them). Anyway…….

You need:

450 – 500g good, lean beef mince

A packet of powdered minestrone soup (one of the few times you’ll EVER see a packet on these pages

Decent sized punnet of mushrooms, chopped

1 clove of fresh garlic finely chopped

tube tomato puree

1 medium sized onion finely chopped

1 beef stock cube (Oxo is fine)

Sherry

Gently fry the onion’s and garlic in a decent sized pan. When the onion has gone translucent, put in the mince. Break it up as much as you can and fold it into the onion. Turn the heat up a bit and keep stirring until the mince has all browned. Crumble the stock cube in and stir it in.

Then pour in a wine glass of sherry, bring it to the boil. Then pour in the packet of soup. Add just enough water to NEARLY cover the meat, squeeze in the puree and quickly bring to to the boil.

That’s it. Just bring the heat right down a bit and simmer for 2 minutes. You’ll get a thick, sweet, herby sauce with a flavour that tastes like you’ve spent hours over it. You may want to add some fresh oregano, but it will have plenty of herbs in already.

Now you don’t need me to tell you how to do pasta, but whatever you choose – spaghetti, penne etc, once you’ve drained the pasta, put in back into the pan, put just a small spoonful of sauce into it and put on the hob on high heat with a knob of butter. Stir it all like a madman. These means the pasta is infused with the sauce, not merely coated. In fact that goes for any pasta dish.