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Intro (Executive summary):

I’ve always loved spaghetti bolognese as we call it in South Africa. It’s not really Italian as I’ve been lead to believe, but what ever it is actually called, its a simple tomato and meat sauce.

After years of experimentation, I have independently developed my own recipe. It has many external influences, so I can’t completely take credit for it. If its similar to your recipe, don’t sue me (you yanks out there) I promise I never held up your grandmother and forced it out of her, OK!

This recipe is highly adaptable and scalable to the intended audience (Linux speak, sorry). It is highly forgiving so if you don’t have a certain ingredient or if add too much or too little of something it should still be fairly edible. I think that most of the ingredients are fairly easy to come by. I hate those recipes that require two pubic hairs from a Siberian orangutan, a pound of the yeti’s toenail clippings and the juice from an Antarctic wild fig.

I recommend using a pressure cooker, otherwise expect this to take up to 4 hours to prepare (but that gives you a lot of time to get vrot on the red wine). If possible try not to eat it immediately, it tends to mature. Leave it in the fridge overnight and warm it up the next day. However, if you simply can’t help yourself and you eat it straight out of the pot, in a tree house away from the rest of your family, you won’t be disappointed.

You can add some fresh chopped garlic to this, I don’t like garlic.

Items needed (infrastructure requirements):

1 x pressure cooker, 5 to 10 litres should do.

1 x gas stove. (the plebs with electric stoves will still be able to pull this off, however I do recommend throwing the electric garbage thing out of the nearest window and visiting your gas stove dealer).

1 x tin opener (or buy those lazy-person ring pull tins).

Some spoons (duh).

1 x colander (drainer thingy for the beans and spagehitti… you twit).

Ingredients (sauce code):

- Beef mince – 500 grams to 1 kilo. (You don’t need that ultra lean stuff, regular stuff is OK. The leans stuff tends to absorb more oil, so you aren’t doing yourself any favours).

- 2 to 4 tins of Italian tomatoes, depending on the desired quantity. (These can be diced or whole, don’t get the South African tomatoes from Koo or All Gold, they tend to be too sour).

- 1 small tin of tomato paste.

- a gulp of olive oil (virgin, extra virgin, estate olive oil or plan old plonk pressed in some hairy person’s arm pit, whatever, it won’t make a difference).

- 1 to 2 glasses of drinkable red wine (Shiraz or merlot is best, pinotage or cab aren’t optimal).

- 1 desert to 1 tbl spoon fresh chopped herbs, Basil, Oregano, thyme and Italian Parsely (dried are OK, basil is useless dry. Don’t go mad with the herbs)

- 2 to 3 beef stock cubes (depending on desired saltiness, the cheese adds quite a bit of saltiness , so moderation is the key here)

- 1 or 2 tins of lentils (lentils add a creamy texture to the dish and help thicken the sauce)

- 1 or 2 tins of your favourite beans. (butter beans, red kidney beans, bartolli beans, chic-peas, whatever. Koo have a nice three bean selection, which I use)

- 1 teaspoon course ground black pepper to taste.

- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional).

- 1 cup of grated vintage gruyere or drunken pecorino.(sharp cheeses that are crumbly are best, don’t get a cheese that will go stringy, if you put cheddar into this I will enact a gruesome vengeful act upon your body and eternal soul, just don’t do it).

- 250ml cream (the normal runny full fat stuff is fine, don’t gasp, this isn’t diet food).

- Spaghetti (fresh is best, Woolworths has a nice fresh spaghetti imported from Italy, but it’s relatively expensive).

Method (compile howto):

Brown mince. You have two options here. For a chunky texture, just throw the mince into the pot with some olive oil and brown (when I say brown I mean the colour brown, not grey). If you would like a smoother texture (the way I prefer it), chuck the mince with some olive oil and a cup of water. Stir the mince mush mixture like crazy until BROWN. When the mince is nice and BROWN and a little crispy throw in the tomatoes and the paste. Drain the beans and lentils, wash them under a tap to get rid of the sludge and throw those in. Dissolve the stock cubes in 250ml boiling water and add that. Throw in the red wine, and throw a glass of it down your throat(it always good to be drunk when cooking, you have something to blame if something goes wrong, I learned that from braaing with my brother in-law). Throw in the pepper and herbs and another one to two cups (250ml) water (so it doesn’t burn in the pressure cooker, or RTFM of the pressure cooker as to liquid and cooking time).

Leave it in the pressure cooker (or simmering in a pot) until the tomatoes have dissolved, you should sir the pot from time-to-time to stop it from catching, it also helps the tomatoes to disolve . Now this is fairly difficult to do in a pressure cooker. I go against the instructions of the pressure cooker manufacturer and de-pressurise the pot using the valves (if you are prone to doing stupid things and then suing people, don’t do it, you might injure yourself). However you inspect the contents of your pressure cooker. The tomatoes need to be completely dissolved and the sauce mustn’t be too watery.

Once the sauce has been compiled according to my loose man page like instructions, throw in the cheese and mix until you can’t see little cheese bits. Let the pot stand until it isn’t boiling (as in bubbling) and add the cream. If it is too hot the cream may separate, in which case you had better be completely plastered on the red wine, so that you have something to blame.

If you are going to eat this straight away, I suggest you cook the pasta before adding the cream.

This concoction will freeze very nicely.

And that is basically it folks.

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