Ragu is a hearty, happy dish with bags of flavour and is a lot less work than might be expected. I do feel that it needs a fresh egg pasta to do it justice, but that might just be me and my penchant for rich food! Tagliatelle is certainly a fabulous type of pasta for this sauce either way.
This is my made-up version of ragu, it isn't nearly as good as my Mum's but hers has a list of ingredients that fills a an A4 page and takes hours to cook... this one is a speedy little number which still manages a beautiful flavour and a great texture. The amount below serves two hungry people, with just enough left over for one of you to have lunch the next day.
So, dice an onion, a stick of celery and a couple of garlic cloves and set them to gently fry in a pan. When they're softened, add in half a pack of mince (about 250g) and give it a good stir. Once that's going brown, add in a tub's worth of chopped chicken livers and keep stirring to brown those as well.
Throw in a diced carrot and a couple of bay leaves, and a glass of red wine. Let that bubble for a bit before topping up with a tin of tomatoes, a squeeze of tomato puree and a large pinch of dried oregano. Add a little water to help form a sauce and leave to simmer for as long as you can manage - a good half hour at least.
Finally, season with salt and pepper before serving with hot pasta.
These are a weird scanditalian fusion that I made up when I couldn't think what I was going to cook for dinner. These would work just as well with pasta as they did in a baguette. They're easy, cheap and really tasty.
You need about 250g of beef mince (half a pack) to feed two greedy adults. First finely dice a yellow onion, a couple of celery stalks and a carrot and fry them gently with a crushed clove of garlic until they are soft. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
Split this mixture, removing half to a bowl and leaving the other half on the heat. Add the mince to the vegetables in the bowl and season with salt, pepper and a generous sprinkle of ground allspice. Mix up by hand and form into little balls, lay these on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and pop in the oven for about 20-30 minutes until cooked all the way through.
Add a tin of chopped tomatoes to the vegetables still in the frying pan, a squeeze of tomato puree, a capful of vodka, salt, sugar, pepper and a finely chopped, deseeded chilli. Let it come to a bubble and then leave to simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in a generous amount of finely chopped parsley and basil.
When the meatballs are done mix them into the tomato sauce and pop the baguettes, sliced lengthwise, under a hot grill to toast up. Butter the baguettes, fill them with the saucy meatballs and enjoy - eat them with your hands, it's much more fun than cutlery.
Chilli is one of my husband's favourite dinners and I've made a fair few variations of it in recent years; this is the recipe I've come up with after all those experiments. It can be made with beef, venison, soya or quorn mince, but the absolute best mince for this is buffalo.
Although buffalo mince is described as lean, it stays moist and has a great texture. If using buffalo mince you can omit the bacon without disastrous results, if you use anything else I'd strongly recommend frying up a couple of slices of bacon alongside the onions at the start. I didn't have any bacon, so it's a good thing I had buffalo mince.
Fry up a diced onion and some smashed garlic (plus bacon, if using), followed by the mince and while that's browning put together the spice mix. Into a little bowl mix up: 2 tsps of dried oregano, 2 tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp ground coriander, 1 tsp hot chilli powder, a large pinch of cayenne pepper, 1 tsp smoked paprika (or ordinary paprika if you've used smoked bacon) and a large pinch of ground cinnamon. You also need a couple of bay leaves.
When the mince is almost completely browned, add the spices and fry for a couple of minutes before adding a squeeze of tomato puree and a tin of chopped tomatoes. Leave to simmer for 5 mins or so, then add a tin of kidney beans. It's worth emptying these into a seive and running under the cold tap before using them; even organic tinned pulses tend to be in a briny, preservative solution that you probably don't want to taste. Pop the lid on and leave to cook for 20 minutes.
After this, take the lid off and add a chopped bell pepper and a peice of 90% cocoa chocolate. You could use 70%, I did before I found the stronger stuff, but do it a little bit at a time and keep tasting - you don't want the chilli to taste of sweet chocolate, it should be just a background hint.
Once that's all melted in, season with plenty of salt, pepper and lemon juice. Finally mix in a load of chopped, fresh coriander.
Ingredients summary: mince of some kind, onion, garlic, bacon (optional), dried oregano, ground coriander, cumin, cinnamon, smoked or ordinary paprika, chilli powder, cayenne pepper, bay leaves, tin of tomatoes, tomato puree, kidney beans, >70% dark chocolate, lemon juice, salt, pepper, fresh coriander.
