Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => The Dressing Room => Topic started by: Sifu Ben on September 24, 2009, 12:31:31 PM
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Inspired by the dinner thread, and so as not to sidetrack it, here's my standard spag bol recipe.
1 onion finely chopped
1 large red pepper, deseeded and sliced cook on medium heat for 10 minutes
2 tsp minced garlic
1 bay leaf
salt and black pepper
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500g lean minced steak raise to high heat and brown mince
dash of worcester sauce then add other ingredients and cook fo 2-3 minutes
2 tsp balsalmic vinegar
6-8 chestnut mushrooms, sliced
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2 tsp sundried tomato paste stir in the tomato paste and cook for 1 minute,
2 tsp dried oregano then add other ingredients. Bring to boil
2 tsp dried basil then simmer
1 small carton passata
500ml beef stock
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2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley after approx 10 minutes, when the sauce has
reduced, stir in parsley, cook for 2 minutes
then serve.
let's hear yours.
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looks good, mine is quite similar but less mince and a greater variety of tomatoes, i use tins rather than passata - and some fresh ones roughly chopped help out a lot. texture and a different flavour
i go for 30 mins simmering minimum to really make it come together, and let the meat take on the sauce. i like them quite thick and rich!!
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Actually, I just realised I don't actually simmer it much, I actively reduce it.
I used to use tins, but you get a thick sauce in a shorter space of time using passata.
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Wifey always makes a ragu mix to base it on. It's got cellary in there which really packs it out.
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I like to mix the meats a bit too - gives you more complexity. I use a mix of beef and pork which are all available in the big supermarkets. Some finely chopped chicken livers are nice in there too (added later). You can use pancetta (or bacon lardons) if you prefer instead or in addition to the pork mince - gives natural saltiness.
My first step is browning off the mince in small batches so you get the colouration on the mince. If you cook it all at the same time the juice released from the mince stops it from frying as you'll have too much liquid in there.
I then set that aside and cook the onion, celery and garlic (crushed and made into a paste with the edge of a sharp knife and some salt to break down the garlic).
When it comes to the tomato content, I like a mix of tinned tomatoes and fresh to give more depth of flavour. Depending on how sweet the tomatoes are, you might want a teaspoon of sugar to bring out the flavours.
With herbs, fresh makes a massive difference and all the major supermarkets stock common herbs for under a quid each. Never used parsley, not sure its something I've ever seen in a Ragu recipe - I'd use Oregano or Basil.
Rather than using all stock, I like to use half stock and half red wine - some recipes say to use all red wine, but it can be a bit too rich imo. Use a big bodied red like a chianti and don't use cr@p wine - get something you'd be happy drinking as you'll be having that with the meal once it's cooked.
Oh, speaking of cooking, trying putting it in the oven to cook slowly over 2-3 hours on 140degrees (depending on how much you're making of course).
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Lots of chili power
And marmite.
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Dried herbs?
My ma would kill me if I dared suggest such a thing.
But then I make the pasta itself from scratch too whenever I have time.
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Make pasta from scratch?
Insanity.
I use quick cook pasta! Cant even be bothered to wait for normal dried pasta to cook, I'm afraid.
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On the herbs front
Parsley is a very commonly used herb in Italian rustic cooking, it just seems to get overlooked for italian here.
I actually have some fresh basil at the moment, but unless you eat italian every other day, or have a herb garden, it doesn't keep well enough to buy it as a storecupboard item. As I mentioned in the other thread, pesto is a good way round this. If I was making, say, a tomato basil and bacon sauce, I'd get fresh basil, for spag bol (which let's face it is a storecupboard dish) the parsley provides enough fresh herb lift.
I'm not convinced that fresh oregano is actually that superior to dried, and it's a pain to prepare.
I've tried using celery, but while I love it in English and French beef dishes, I find it doesn't work for me in tomato sauces. While it lifts the flavour of the beef, I find it mutes the tomato.
HTH, interesting idea with the mince, but I typically cook it in a wok anyway, so the water evaporates quickly and it browns pretty well ( nothing worse than grey meat in a bolognaise though :( )
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I sometime's add a bit of balsamic vinigar after I've browned the mince so that it lifts all the nice bits out of the bottom of the pan. Sometimes add a bit when I'm cooking bacon. If you add a small splah right at the end of cooking and whirl it around a bit (technical term) then it makes bacon twice as nice. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't depending on how I'm feeling.
Oddly enough, the wife has gone shopping with my mate and it looks like we might have either spag bog or chilli for dinner.
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with passata, I always get a thick sauce with a watery bit underneath after I serve it up, any know a way to stop this?
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Drain your pasta better :D
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A) Drain your pasta better
B) Add the pasta to the sauce, not vice versa.
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lol I thought it was the sauce, can't believe it's that, doh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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And marmite.
i like marmite in stews and gravy's - not so sure in spag bols. Its made right here in burton and the factory stinks!!
i just cooked mine for tonight - although its totally unauthentic and mostly influenced by what was in the house... i know it will be great
firstly some lamb mince, fried till brown then removed from the pan, and drained. to get rid of some of the fat.
Olive oil in the same pan to fry 1 red onion and one white onion (what i had in), loads of garlic, some rough chunks of chorizo. fry till you dont want to anymore.
then i add the mince back in, give it a minute or so and start adding flavours. today is was a oxo, some smoked paprika, a good slug of balsamic, loads of puree and some dried oregano. this all gets stirred in for a minute or two.
after that it got a tin of chopped tomatoes, a couple of handfulls of fresh chopped cherry tomatoes and some chopped peppers (i prefer peppers chopped fine and fried at start, fiancee likes them large and with a bit more bite)
then half a head of brocolli and some sweetcorn because we really should be eating more veg ;) top up with 1/2 a tin of water, put lid on and simmer.
which is where we are at now. the lid will be removed for the last 10 minutes of cooking, when the pasta is in. probably in another half hour
i made it quite rich as i have flu and wanted something that may cut through and be a bit warming at the same time
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I think marmite is a tone sucker in spag bol- good on toast though.
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i made it quite rich as i have flu and wanted something that may cut through and be a bit warming at the same time
Whiskey
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Whiskey
normally, yes.
but i have just had my first 3 nights without alcohol this year so i cant help but think i should carry on that way for a little longer :?
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Been trying myself but my mates stopping tonight so I'm already 2 beers and a couple of whiskey and cokes down. Just finished the bottle of Grants (hence the coke) which I was bought as a baby present, just got the two bottles to go which I got for my birthday :( :D
Get well soon!
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Make pasta from scratch?
Insanity.
I use quick cook pasta! Cant even be bothered to wait for normal dried pasta to cook, I'm afraid.
My ma is Italian. I likely ate pasta 5 days a week every week until I left home and most of her family were chef's/cooks (other than those who owned fish and chips shops, most of you English folks have NO IDEA the quality of chippies we're lucky enough to have in Scotland due to Italian immigrants) and I'm unfortunately really fussy about pasta.
Hell, the phrase Spag Bol makes me want to stab. :lol:
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Hell, the phrase Spag Bol makes me want to stab. :lol:
I think you been listening too much death metal ;)
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Make pasta from scratch?
Insanity.
I use quick cook pasta! Cant even be bothered to wait for normal dried pasta to cook, I'm afraid.
My ma is Italian. I likely ate pasta 5 days a week every week until I left home and most of her family were chef's/cooks (other than those who owned fish and chips shops, most of you English folks have NO IDEA the quality of chippies we're lucky enough to have in Scotland due to Italian immigrants) and I'm unfortunately really fussy about pasta.
Hell, the phrase Spag Bol makes me want to stab. :lol:
I can sympathise.
I can only use the various names for curries in the UK with my fingers crossed behind my back (including vindaloo, from the other thread, which is portuguese) since my dad is anglo indian; born and spent his childhood in bangalore. Hence my fondness for hot food, and the fact that the only foods that I give any dilligence to cooking properly are curries. (I cook a $%&#ing hell of a curry, for the record; everything else is just mixing stuff together, heating it up and hoping it doesnt taste horrible :lol:)
Edit: and I am only english insofar as accident of birth. Hopefully you can see a sliver of the facts of that above ;) (assumption is....unwise; I'm a mongrel and a half (indian is the tip of the iceberg) and consider human my nationality)
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Make pasta from scratch?
Insanity.
I use quick cook pasta! Cant even be bothered to wait for normal dried pasta to cook, I'm afraid.
My ma is Italian. I likely ate pasta 5 days a week every week until I left home and most of her family were chef's/cooks (other than those who owned fish and chips shops, most of you English folks have NO IDEA the quality of chippies we're lucky enough to have in Scotland due to Italian immigrants) and I'm unfortunately really fussy about pasta.
Hell, the phrase Spag Bol makes me want to stab. :lol:
I can sympathise.
I can only use the various names for curries in the UK with my fingers crossed behind my back (including vindaloo, from the other thread, which is portuguese) since my dad is anglo indian; born and spent his childhood in bangalore. Hence my fondness for hot food, and the fact that the only foods that I give any dilligence to cooking properly are curries. (I cook a $%&#ing hell of a curry, for the record; everything else is just mixing stuff together, heating it up and hoping it doesnt taste horrible :lol:)
Edit: and I am only english insofar as accident of birth. Hopefully you can see a sliver of the facts of that above ;) (assumption is....unwise; I'm a mongrel and a half (indian is the tip of the iceberg) and consider human my nationality)
I meant English as in "residents of England" really :). When I moved to Birmingham I was astounded that I couldn't get an Italian chippy anywhere, and everyone thought the idea of Italian owned Chippies being commonplace quite bizarre.
It was genuinely upsetting, you don't know what it's like having your regular deep fried pizza craving denied. :(
I thought most curry names were accurate Indian words, balti and masala aside.
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fair play. there are a lot of portugeuse words in indian usage. The thing that irks me the most, and what I really meant, is that the curries you get here, while nice, bare little resemblance to the real thing. There are a few places in the parts of london that do some really authentic curries, but not many. A Saag, while a real dish, doesnt involve putting spinach in a blender. THAT slop is NOT chat. If you go to madras and ask for a madras they'll look at you like youre...well, from england (though I hear some places have adapted accordingly for tourism sake).
That said they are nice. Just not 'real'. The names arent for the same dishes!
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Besides, you go to india and in any given place chances are unless its geared for tourists or the rich you ask for curry and get what youre given! Varies from place to place and chef to chef. Its a big place and theres plenty of curry there that you, I and my dad dont know about!
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I lived with some Indian guys in my first year of uni, tried some of their food. You'll hate me but I much prefer our bar-stewardised English versions :lol: :oops: Just didnt like their stuff at all apart from one quite nice spicy rice dish, I cant remember what it was.
Smells pretty horrible as well, imo!
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I lived with some Indian guys in my first year of uni, tried some of their food. You'll hate me but I much prefer our bar-stewardised English versions :lol: :oops: Just didnt like their stuff at all apart from one quite nice spicy rice dish, I cant remember what it was.
Smells pretty horrible as well, imo!
BURN THE WITCH! ;)
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I hate it when you get curries with too much ghee and its all floating on the top - bleurgh!!!
The curries I've made myself that were supposed to be authentic have been more like spicy stews than anything else - very nice and much more savoury than the usual arse-burners you get when you're out on the piss.
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I hate it when you get curries with too much ghee and its all floating on the top - bleurgh!!!
The curries I've made myself that were supposed to be authentic have been more like spicy stews than anything else - very nice and much more savoury than the usual arse-burners you get when you're out on the piss.
That varies A LOT from place to place too. Some places standard curry makes a phaal look like a korma and some very hot curries are unusual. As a general trend, south indian curries are much hotter.
More commonly real dishes make much heavier use of hard tasting spices like jeera, cardamum and termaric (and are much stronger flavoured as a result), have less meat and more potatoes and veg and are drier. You rarely get a lot of sloppy sauce. It happens, but its only the norm in british curries.
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I had a lobster curry with ghee and lychies from a local place one. Absolutely bloody aweful.
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One of my friends owns an "Indian" restaurant.He is actually of Bangladeshi origin and says that most of the Indian restaurants are Bangaldeshi.
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A lot are, yes. Disproportionately so, in my experience. Lots of pakistanis running indian restauants too!
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I lived with some Indian guys in my first year of uni, tried some of their food. You'll hate me but I much prefer our bar-stewardised English versions :lol: :oops: Just didnt like their stuff at all apart from one quite nice spicy rice dish, I cant remember what it was.
Smells pretty horrible as well, imo!
Maybe they just weren't good at cooking? 8)
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That's a possibility, they did set the fire alarm for the whole block off a few times :?
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At uni I used to live with a muslim girl (think her family were from India, but she hails from Saudi). Her auntie used to bring her loads of food and she used to share it about. She once had these little curried goat chops, absolutely lovely.
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I'll stick my oar in on this one.
I just use mince, Tomatoes, Onion, Basil and Garlic. Maybe a little chilli of some kind to add flavour.
I cook off the mince and chopped onions, add the tinned tomatoes and stick in a couple of crushed garlic cloves and a clove of chopped garlic. Let it reduce down and add the basil, add salt and pepper to taste if you really want to. Spot on.
Paddy.