I'm gonna batch cook today, a beautiful twist
on a Bolognese. I'm gonna show you a very British Bolognese.
In this nice big ragu pan, I'll put in some olive oil.
I'll start the story with rosemary, two or three sprigs
into that oil and that will be the beginning of flavour.
Another really good trick worth mentioning
are these pre-chopped bags of carrots, onions, and celery I think they're really
handy. Do not rush this bit we have to soften
this veg and we have to start lightly
caramelising this veg, if we don't, if we just boil the veg
it's only ever going to be average. Now, in this recipe I'm using mushrooms,
wonderful chestnut mushrooms, they're going to give you huge flavour and
amazing colour. Kind of make them the same size as the
carrots and the onions, give or take. So look, if you look in the pan now you
can see that all these lovely veggies are really soft and they're taking on
colour. Now we go in with the mushrooms. The mushrooms are mainly water so
they're now going to start giving water to the pan
and then it will go back to frying again.
So I've got a kilo of beautiful minced beef.
Carry on cooking this for another like 10-15 minutes
to get back to frying again. So now is when I love
to add the beer. A beautiful pale ale goes in,
it's got amazing malty flavours, really deep kind of chocolatey vibe.
Gonna put a bottle in, about 500 mls. So what I want to do now is bring that to
the boil and cook it down.
So next up, we've got the tin tomatoes.
So four tins of tomatoes will go in our ragu.
Oh, hello! You know what we're doing?
Buddy Bolognese and tomato sauce!
So now we go in with the tomatoes and we'll let that simmer for like one
to two hours until really tender and delicious.
Do you wanna use that? Yeah that's a good idea. So,
get your four tins or tomatoes in and then it's nice to fill
two tins up with water. Bring that to a boil
and let that simmer for an hour or two until it's succulent,
gorgeous, and tender, and what I'm going to do then
is show you how to make the most amazing pasta. I want to show you what I think is
the coolest little hack. I've got two packs of fresh
lasagna, what we can do is slice down gap, slice
down gap, slice down and then kind of put it slightly ajar
and do slice down gap, slice down gap.
Make it wobbly?
It can be wobbly. Once this is cooking,
it's going to separate like a concertina. This is going to grab hold of the ragu
and the sauce in a very different kind of cool way.
So I've got a pan of boiling water, if you want you can put a little oil
in the water this will help these not stick together,
and then we'll literally drop this into the water and it cooks in like three
minutes. Can you see how all the little cuts are
opening up? I'll put in a little bit of the ragu here, just a couple of spoons,
then I'll take that amazing pasta, look at the shape of it!
A little splash of water by the way, just to make it oozy and then the last,
very British ingredient - some Cheddar. It really melts beautifully. And then I
like to use two spoons, just to almost dress it like
a salad. But just look how gorgeous this serves up.
Look at that. And I just find this way,
you go from the everyday to something really sublime. A beautiful
little take on the great Bolognese.
Right, let's have a little try.
The beer has this big, malty flavour but there is an underlying bitterness,
right, but then when it's contrasted with the sweetness
of the ragu, the vegetables, the tomatoes, that is so tasty.
I'll let the ragu cool down and then I'll bag it up and I can freeze it,
I'm really pleased with that.