A LOAD OF BOLOGNAISE

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Urgh I new this day would come. The day when I craved a bowl of pasta but I was nil by mouth when it came to delicious carbs. So I thought as long as I could make a bolognaise sauce that was extra chunky and satisfying then I could eat that as a meal instead of treating it as just a topping.

The truth about bolognaise is that the real deal is something completely different to what we're served up in stacks of places we eat out. Bolognaise is traditionally more of a ragù style sauce - basically a bunch of vegies chopped up, fried, then shredded meat is added, tomatoes and it's simmered for a really long time. The thing you should know is I'm an impatient person and I didn't have the time to simmer for hours, nor the patience to shred meat. So I made a version of bolognaise that's a bit like the old school sauce and a bit like the mainstream bastardised sauce. Here goes.

The Ingredients
Serves 6 (or 3 really hungry people)

• 500g Pork and veal mince (delicious sauce isn't made with beef)
• 2 stalks of celery, finely diced
• 1 large brown onion, finely diced
• 2 carrots, finely diced
• 5 tomatoes - slightly over ripe
• 1 x can of peeled roma tomatoes
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 clove of garlic crushed
• 1 tbsp of crushed chillis
• 1 cup of white wine (I used Sauv Blanc but use any white except for Chardonnay)
• 1/2 cup of skim milk
• Parmesan to serve

 Chop up all your veggies nice and finely, heat a large fry pan with the olive oil, place the garlic and chilli and stir until the pan has heated nicely (but don't let the garlic go brown!) When it's ready, pop all your veggies in and fry until golden and shiny. Put them in a bowl and set aside.

Divide your mince into batches (three is plenty) and fry one portion at a time. Let the mince go brown. After you've cooked up all three batches put the mince back in the pan. Grab your white wine and add slowly into the pan - this deglazes the pan - which is just a fancy word for getting all the caramlised bits of meat and vegetable that have stuck to the bottom of the pan off. Stir until the bits that were stuck on the pan have lifted off. Then add the milk and simmer until the meat has absorbed most of the liquid.

Here's a funny one - you'd probably not expect milk to be in this sauce - but it adds a level of creaminess to the sauce that can't be beaten and it makes the meat extra tender.

Add the cooked veggies back in the pan, give it a good stir then add your quartered fresh tomatoes and can of roma tomatoes. Crush up the roma tomatoes so the juice runs through the meat. Season with the pinch of sugar and salt and stir, then simmer the pan. Cook for a further 30-40 minutes on low heat, stirring every 10 minutes or so to make sure nothing is sticking and everyone is still friends.

Serve straight up in bowls with a generous handful of parmesan cheese on top while the sauce is nice and hot. You could definitely serve this with a light pasta (spaghetti / fettucine) but I really like it as a chunky almost italian style chilli. If you really crave bread you can't go wrong with serving it with a few slices of toasted sourdough so you can dunk up all that lovely sauce.