I once got so intoxicated I blacked out and couldn’t remember the entire night. When I woke up my friends kept raving about how I had gone to the shops with them, brought ingredients, and made the best pasta they ever ate in their lives.
I had no memory of making the pasta. Luckily, I found a shopping list receipt and some handwritten notes in my kitchen, and was able to recreate it. I’ve made it a few times since, it really is delicious.
A small improvement I’ve made since is to add some vinegar in the final step of preparing the sauce - this balances out the cream more.
Ingredients
Salt
1 Carrot - Grated
1 Large red onion - Diced
2 Cloves fresh garlic - Finely chopped
Chilli Infused Olive Oil - 2 Caps
Premium Mince (About 600 grams)
George Windhym 555 Shiraz - 2 Standard cups
Dutch spiced cheese - About 150 grams
Gouda - About 150 grams
Parmesan - About 50 grams freshly grated on a fine grater
Fresh basil - 1 Handful finely chopped
Fresh oregano - 1 Handful finely chopped
Fresh parsley - 1 Handful finely chopped
Cumin seed - 2 large pinches
Cinnamon - 2 large pinches
Dolmio bolognaise sauce - 1 jar
Thickened cream - 2/3 of a small tub
Pasta Rigatoni - 500g (Not egg pasta)
Garlic & chilli stuffed olives - Finely chopped
Anchovies - 1 Small can finely chopped
Recipe
- Heat frying pan to 7/9 heat for about 3 minutes to get it quite hot
- Add olive oil and swirl the pan around till the surface is created
- Add the grated carrot, diced red onion and chopped garlic, along with a small pinch of salt
- Stir a little and cook for around 5 minutes until the carrot starts to shrink and give off a fragrant odour
- Add the 2 cups of wine and stir a few times
- Once the wine starts to develop bubbles and boil add the beef. Use a wooden spoon over the next few minutes to break apart the beef and mix it evenly into the liquid. Add the cumin seed and cinnamon while doing this.
- Once the mixture is homogenous and starts to develop a boil again add the jar of pasta sauce and stir in
- Take the heat down lower to around 5-6/9 so that the sauce is not boiling viciously. You want to reduce it at a low heat so the meat doesn’t overcook and taste bad. It’s different in every pan but this process can take anywhere from 15-30 minutes. After about 10 minutes of the reducing process add the cream and stir it in, before you continue reducing.
- When the sauce has about 5 minutes left to reduce boil a large pot of water and add quite a lot of salt. You want to use the biggest pot you have and get the water boiling viciously before the pasta is added. Pasta will take about 7-10 minutes to cook but you want to drain it at about the 6-7 minute mark so it still has a little bite to it. It will continue to soften because of its own residual heat.
- Once the pasta is added to the pot immediately add the herbs, olives and anchovies to the sauce and stir. It should look pretty thick by this point.
- Once the pasta is drained add it to the plates. Quickly stir about 1/4 of the non-parmesan cheee and serve immediately over the pasta. Garnish with the rest of the cheese and the parmesan.