Lovely pasta sauce !

This is a recipe handed down from generation to generation, from flatmate to flatmate (e.g., I got it off my flatmate who got it off her ma’). I was bored out my mind on Tuesday and fancied doing some cooking, on the cheap, nothing special. I was sitting there, pondering what to make, when I thought I’d do a tomatoes pasta sauce. Turns out, it was the right choice, well nice, and the left over sauce went towards a rather lush brushgetta type meal. This’ll take you 45 minutes, of which you’ll spend 5 of them chopping, and then a little stir every 10 mins, piss easy, well lush, better than anything you can get out of a bottle.

What you need

• A large sauce pan
• Two tins of chopped tomatoes
• An onion
• Some carrots
• Some Garlic
• Some Garlic paste
• Some tomato paste
• A nice glug of red wine… use your flatmates if you don’t have any or don’t want to open a big bottle.
• Sugar, Salt, Pepper, Sweet Paprika, Bay Leaf and a chilli.

What you need to do

• Chop up about 3 bulbs of garlic and a chilli, leave the seeds in, it’s not going to be hot.
• Chop up an onion by cutting it in half, taking off the skin, making two cuts 90% of the way across horizontally, then chopping vertically.
• Chop up the carrot too, I didn’t bother to peal it, but I nibbed off the ends.
• Fry up the garlic and chilli in a drop of oil and let them soften up a little.
• Add the tinned tomatoes, a bay leaf, I squidged out some garlic paste from a tube at this point, ‘cus I quite like garlic.
• Add a nice glug of red wine.
• Leave it to simmer gently, when the next ad break comes on the telly, in about 15 minutes, take another look.
• If it’s a bit dry now, swoosh in some more red wine and let it reduce until you get the texture you want.
• Now taste it, see what it needs. When I did it, it needed some Sugar, Salt and Pepper, remember: You can’t take it out, but you can always add a bit more. Add it, mix it about, taste it, when you’re happy, then I’m happy.

Nice Things you can do with the sauce.

• Serve it over some rice or pasta; maybe add a bread crumbed chicken breast to it.
• Cover some bread, like chiabbatta or a pizza base, or garlic bread; plonk some cheese and toppings (chorizo, sweet corn, cured meats, mushrooms… whatever you fancy).
• Slice up some bread along the lines of a French loaf, top with sauce and some hallumni, and you’ve got a lovely burshgetta to serve your guests.
• Put in a small ceramic dish some spinach, then on top of that the sauce, than crack and egg over and bake. I forgot what this is called, but it would work.
• Put it into sandwich bags and freeze into portions.
• Top a chicken breast with it, covered with cheese.
• Plonk it over some chips (home made ones, prefably)
• Stuff some mushrooms or red peppers with it; put some cheese on top and/or breadcrumbs.
• Add some honey and more chilli cover with ribs (Waitrose do lush ones, they’re about a fiver and come in a long folded box, seriously good stuff) and bake.
• Put it over a jacket potato
• Use it as a salsa for Nachos, burritos, fajitas… that sort of thing.
• Make a tart by putting it over some puff pastry, adding a bit of cheese.
• Use it as a base for Mussaka or lasagne.

Chop up some garlic

Chop up some carrots and onions.

Cut like this in three places; then chop downwards.

Sweat the garlic, carrots and onions down 'till they soften and go sweet.

Plonk in the tomatoes and some red wine.

Cook out the wine.

There are the Chilis to give some heat, take them out afterwarsd. Here i've cooked it down to much, add some more wine if you do.

Lookin' good, Tastin' good !

Well lush, don't both with the poncy vine tomatoes.

Roast Beef (I think)

I really like Roast Beef. I grow up not having it, I don’t think my mum ever cooked it for me, but when I go to the likes of a sandwich shop, a roast beef and horseradish sandwich is one of my favorites. My mum did make Salt Beef, which I’ll try to make myself one day, but it just isn’t the same (in fact, it’s far better, but still, not the same).

By chance, I was browsing around ASDA with my flatmate, Russingleton, when I spied a ‘brisket’ and my juices got flowing about having having lovely roast beef sandwiches for a week.

I couldn’t find any recipes on the video websites by any of my favorite chefs, so I thought I would piece together what I thought I remembered from Telly and do something myself.

Here’s what you need.

• A bag of carrots
• 2 onions
• 2 Garlic bulbs
• Some port or red wine
• Some concentrated beef stock
• A brisket of beef.
• Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
• Mustard (Grainy or English)

Here’s what I did….

• Put the oven on full-whack
• Cut the onions into 6 or 8 pieces, all put together.
• Cut the carrots up into bite sized chunks.
• Cover the beef in Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
• Make up about 1½ pints of beef stock, I used some concentrated stuff because I thought it would taste stronger.
• Add three good glugs of port to the stock.
• Brown off the beef in a frying pan
• Cover the beef in grainy mustard, or English if want a fuller flavour.
• Rest veg in the pan, with 2 bulbs of garlic separated into cloves (I didn’t bother to peel it, life’s to short) cover  the veg with stock.
• Place the beef on top, cover with tin foil.
• Put the oven down to about 150ish.
• Cook it for about 3 hours, turning it every now-and-then.
• Leave to rest for 30 minutes, carve and serve.

Most of the stuff I used.

Brown off the beef.

Veg in a pan

Beef covered with mustard, veg covered in stock.

The liquid doubled ! Oops, oh well, makes a nice soup.

Looks good, but was way too tough.

The soup bit is amazing though.

The garlic is nice and squidgy, but the other veg was too hard.