Thankfully the Bosch family are into real food, so it wasn't necesary for me to stretch my imagination, and then too, the 'menu' had already been requested.
Originally destined to be Spaghetti Bolognaise, with a salad and garlic bread, I left out the garlic bread. Terry's dad don't do garlic, 'cos garlic does him.
5 kind of size medium type onions, sliced and braised until almost see-through was my first step. When they were done, I put them off to one side, until later.
About 1.5 kg of lean beef mince. If you use anything but lean, it becomes very oily and kinda yech. More or less 2 cups of water into a pot, and I tossed the still frozen mince into the water. As the water heats, it warms the mince up, and you can scrape mince off the frozen chunk. Doing it like this you avoid getting those big annoying lumps of mince.
Right after introducing the water and mince, I started preparing the bolognaise sauce.
4 dinky tins of tomato paste, 1 tin of tomato and onion braai relish. A solid squirt of mustard sauce, and a not so solid squirt of sweet chili sauce. Liberal sprinkle of worcester sauce. Then, some syrup, just to sweeten the concoction a bit. Ah what the hell, splash in some vinegar as well. Mix. mix some more. Spread it around.
Taste the sauce. The tomato paste makes it very bland, and a bit tart, that's why I add all the rest of the kitchen stuff. I do taste and tweak as it goes along. Last night I had to add about 2 teaspoons of sugar to get it just right. A big pinch of dried mixed herbs will help everything along. You'll only taste the herbs later though, once everything has cooked. Smoking herbs while performing kitchenary fuctions is not advised.
With the sauce done, play with the mince. Help it get to that stage that there are no great big lumps left. Your mince needs to have fluid just just covering it.
Now add your sauce. Just tip the whole lot in. And then stir it all up.
I was fortunate in that I was able to leave the bolognaise, that's the mince and sauce mixture, a few hours. Spaghetti Bolognaise is like curry, it gets better with age. When it gets too old, it goes into pies. Or is it dogs?
When I got around to the pasta making, I was originally a bit peeved, annoyed, that I didn't have spaghetti! There was a packet of linguine, and a packet of taglietelle.
I'm not Italian, so, whatta the hella, letsa makea da pasta eh?!
For the pasta I used a mother great pot, probably about 8 or 10 litres. It was big enough that i wouldn't need to break the pasta. Third to half fill with water. A splash of cooking oil. Lid on, and leave to boil.
While the boiling is trying to happen, start with the salads. I made two, one in the morning when I made the bolognaise, and then another while I was busy with the pasta.
In the first salad I used: lettuce, cucumber, yellow pepper, a small packet of peanuts and raisins (smashed the peanuts up a bit), and tomato.
The second salad had celery, olives, tomato, cherry tomatoes, and cheddar cheese. I would have preferred a nice piece of crumbly feta though.
With the pasta water boiling honnerd bedonnerd, I quickly threw the linguine and the taglietelle in, and turned the heat on under the bolognaise.
Now things started getting interesting. I stirred the bolognaise, which although nice and moist, does tend to stick. I was lifting the pasta from time to time to make sure it wasn't sticking. I also put the final touches to the salads, and grated some cheese.
And then all was ready!
Drain the pasta, through a colander preferably, and chuck the bolognaise into it.
Mix it up.
Pour the mess into a serving dish. I used two, as there was enough Spaghetti Bolognaise to feed a lot of people.
Serve.
This photo of the pasta dish was taken at lunch time today.
It's leftover from last night, and Terry fed it to the boys.
Let the hordes sort themselves out.
I don't add salt to food when I'm cooking. I like lots of salt, most people don't, so I leave it out, and let them add their own.
If you're going to try spaghetti Bolognaise tonight, or any of the other recipes I have on my blog,
Lekker vreet!
Loved the way the whole family went back for seconds. You did good!
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