Spoggy Boggy

How is this for progress? Last Thursday I took on my first main course, which I thought was relatively easy.

Sticking with the theme of a simple three course feast, Mum decided she would teach me a traditional Morrey Spaghetti Bolognese (she likes to think we have Italian ancestors, but I'm not convinced).

After a brief conversation on Wednesday evening I had a choice between cooking Toad in the Hole or Spag Bol. I decided to turn down the toad as it's particularly difficult to catch the little critters at this time of year - the slippery little customers prefer much warmer weather.

Before I begin to waffle about my lesson I have to tell you that I came across a nifty spaghetti measuring gadget lying around the kitchen. A plastic tool, which appears to be supervised by a mouse. I still can't quite work out the connection between the spaghetti and the mouse but it seems to work.

We digress, thinking back to my first lesson cooking tomato soup, I was immediately faced with the same onion challenge I failed at last time. However, I had decided to look for a way to avoid the painful onion eyes and asked Mum for a top tip. She suggested that I leave the root of the offending onion intact and guess what it worked! It was brilliant, not a tear shed.

Now, peeling the ingredients appears to be a downfall in my cooking - last time carrots, this time garlic. I'd eventually peeled the two cloves as instructed by Mum who had told me that they would be easier to peel if I nipped their ends off. Next thing I heard 'that's half of the garlic gone you noodle' - now I thought we were cooking with spaghetti not noodles but apparently I was being far too generous with my waste. Oh well, not to worry.

Once I'd prepared the vegetables it was just a case of throwing all of the components into the pan. First up, browning the mince, which incidentally turns a grey sort of colour, was relatively easy with the onions and the garlic.

Usually at this point in proceedings, Mum might be tempted to throw in a Dolmio mix (or any other branded tomato based sauce). Seriously though when is your Dolmio day? My challenge was to make my own sauce.

With a squirt of tomato puree, a couple of tins of chopped tomatoes, some beef stock and chopped herbs we had the base to our sauce. But Mum wasn't finished there... with a dash of Worcestershire Sauce and some Lazy Chillies the mix was almost complete (by the way Mum claims that the last two are secret ingredients, so probably best not to tell anyone). Just as an aside, I've no idea what makes a chilli lazy, anyone?

Unlike last week Mum wasn't following a recipe because apparently cooking Bolognese is like riding a bike, 'once you have done it you don’t forget'. It's one of those meals you can have so often that it becomes boring, but it's surprising what different things you can come up with, off the top of your head, to zing it up a bit. 

Another thing which occurred to me whilst doing this is that when we came to looking in one of Jamie Oliver's cook books for a recipe for Spag Bol, we found that he seems to have a bit of an obsession with adding celery and carrots to all his meals. Now, you already know my feelings about my vegetable/tomato soup so you can imagine my surprise when Jamie's recipe for Spag Bol is almost identical, except for the obvious addition of minced beef. I'm not one to blow my own trumpet (cue fanfare) but I have to say, this Spag Bol was looking good and smelling incredible, move over Jamie.

As the spaghetti cooked I took the opportunity to check out an old wives tale. Apparently, according to some random old wife, rather than standing looking at the spaghetti boiling and generally umming and arring whether it's done, the old wife says 'if it sticks it's done, if it isn't it'll fall'.  I decided to lob a piece at the wall - the spaghetti was done - it stuck.

So there you have it, reasonably easy spaghetti bolognese.

This cooking malarkey isn't really difficult... is it? 

 

Oh, and if you grow tomatoes in your greenhouse I'm coming after you because there seems to be a theme in my cooking.