members recipes

Feeds 8 easily - freezes no problem - great for work lunches as well - just prepare pasta or rice the night before and re heat all in microwave :) The best in my opinion - very strong flavours and works well with any type pasta and rice, even for yoru lasagna or cannelonis. Perfect :) I use to do the above in 10 minutes flat with a simpler recipe which i will post later.

Ingredients
2 Cans of chopped tomatoes 400g each
1 Box of passata 500ml – both preferably “Napolina” make•
1Kg of mince beef meat
200ml of red wine
2 OXO meat cubes
3 Onions or 2 large onions
1 Red pepper
5 Cloves of garlic
300 Grams of white mushrooms
30 Grams of real butter
Garlic Italian herbs
Mild chilli powder
Basil or Oregano or Italian seasoning.
Salt and pepper

Method
Preparation:

Poor the chopped tomatoes, passata and wine in a bowl, add 2 heaped table spoons of Garlic Italian herbs, mild chilli powder and mix well and leave to the side, add a little salt and pepper to taste if you want.

Finely chop the onions and garlic

Cut the peppers in small squares

Cut the mushrooms in thick half slices, cut it in half first then slice each half in 4 slices for the largest mushrooms then the rest to the same thickness.

Add the butter to a large pan, I use a large wok to cook this, put the heat to medium and let the butter melt without burning it and add the mushrooms first and mix well so that the butter goes on all the mushrooms, then add the garlic, mix well, add the onions and peppers and mix well, lower the heat to low and cook for about 5 minutes without burning anything until the mushrooms and onions have watered and well reduced in size.

In the meantime, lay the mince meat on a cutting board and separate it as much as you can, break the oxo cubes in powder onto the meat and mix well in the meat.

Add the meat to the pan, increasing the heat back to medium, and stir in the meat well with the contents.

Cook the meat till it is 85% cooked (brown/greyish) and still leaving a few red/pinky bits in order for the sauce to cook the rest of the meat and to avoid the meat from being to dry….

Add the sauce to the mix in the pan, bring to a small boil, lower the heat to minimum and simmer for about 25 minutes, stirring regularly every 5 minutes.

Add either basil or oregano for the last 5 minutes of cooking to taste.

You can then start cooking pasta or rice during the simmering..