Bolognese sauce

Bolognese Sauce

Spaghetti Bolognese is one of Australia's comfort food.  Anything that resembles noodles entices my salivary glands.  This recipe from Ferran Adria's (from the legendary elBulli restaurant)  'The Family Meal' is my favourite.  It has a great depth of flavours.  Absolutely triple yum!  Howevever, I forgot to take a photo of the finished product. 

Ingredients
225 g butter
1.2 kg minced beef
350 g pork sausage meat
500 g onions
150 g celery
400 g carrots
150 ml extra virgin olive oil
12 g tomato puree
1.6 g chopped tomatoes
1 pinch sugar


Method:

Put a large pan over a medium high heat, then add the butter and let it melt.  Add the beef mince, fry until it has changed colour, then add the sausage meat.

Cook for a few more minutes, season with salt and pepper, then cook for 15 minutes longer, stirring frequently, until dark golden brown.

In the meanwhile, finely chop the onions and celery.  Finely chop the carrots.  Or if you have a thermomix, throw them together on speed 8, 30 seconds.

I had a big harvest of yellow bell tomatoes, so I processed them in the thermomix speed 8, 30 seconds.

Put another pan over a low heat, then pour in the olive oil.  Fry the vegetables gently until softened, about 12 minutes.

Add the meat to the vegetables and mix everything together well.

Add the chopped tomatoes with the tomato puree.  Season with salt, pepper and sugar.  Simmer the sauce for 1 1/2 hours until the meat is very tender.

This bolognese sauce will go well with spaghetti or lasagna.

Do try this.  It is very delicious!

Easy Curry Puff

Easy Curry Puff

Curry puffs - a snack in Malaysia, and oh, so moorish, you have to eat more than one!  My mum makes a mean curry puff, and she is always asked to bring some for dinner parties!  They are great as an entree or a savory morning/afternoon tea.  They can be made bite size as finger food, or giant sized for a giant sized meal (think Cornish pasties).

If you want serious flavour, don't use gourmet mince.  But I am trying to keep the Man Of The House alive, so I feed him LEAN mince.  Make sure you cube the potatoes into 1 cm cubes or there abouts or else you might have sight difficulty in keeping the filling in!

4 tbsp oil

1 kg lean or gourmet mince

5 large potatoes (approx 1 kg), cut into 1 cm cubes

2 onions, chopped finely

2 cloves garlic, chopped finely

1 tbsp curry powder

salt

pepper

6 sheets puff pastry

water

milk wash

Method:

Heat up the oil in a wok or large based pot, and brown garlic and onion, on medium heat. 

Add mince.  Stir to break up up the meat, add in curry powder. Then add potatoes, stir till well mixed. 

Turn the heat to low. Keep stirring every few minutes to make sure that the mix does not stick at the bottom of the wok/pot. When the potatoes are soft (could take about 30 mins), add salt, pepper to taste. 

Leave to cool.

Separate the pastry sheets.  Using a sharp knife, cut each sheet into 3 equal parts horizontally and vertically.  (this gives you 9 squares).

Pick up one square and place in your left palm. Place a teaspoon of cooled curried mince and potato mixture into the square. Put a little water on the edges, and fold the square diagonally so that it forms a triangle.  Press edges together.  Place on an oven tray.  Repeat.

Brush with milk wash.

Bake at 220 degress Centigrate till browned.  (about 20 mins)

Enjoy!