I love cooking, but I hate cooking during the week. Put simply, when I get home from work, I’m normally starving hungry and want to eat something, anything, right now. That doesn’t lead to delicious meals.
Thankfully, it’s getting cold in the UK right now – which means that it’s time to get out the slow cooker and use my post food satiation to plan and prepare dinners for the next few meals. Once I’ve remembered where I can buy Puy lentils we’ll try some Cassoulade. But first, it’s time for an old favourite – Ragu.
Photo by JoeyWan under Creative Commons
I think that this was probably once a Delia Smith recipe. If anyone finds the recipe, I’ll link it up for comparison.
- A big slow cooker – 3.5 litres is about right
- 500g lean beef mince
- 500g pork mince
- 180g chicken livers
- 2 medium onions
- 6 cloves of garlic
- 200g streaky bacon or lardons
- 2×400g chopped tomatoes
- 2×200g tubes of double concentrate tom puree
- 3/4 bottle red wine
- 5 decent stems of basil, finely chopped
- 1/2 a grated nutmeg
- salt & pepper
Put the wine, tomatoes, tomato puree, nutmeg and the basil into the slow cooker. Switch it to auto and let it start warming.
Finely chop the onion and garlic and let it fry in a pan with good 3 or 4 table spoons of oil. Stir it to stop it sticking.
After 10 minutes (assuming nothing is burning) add the lardons. Cook until the lardons start looking cooked. Pour the lot into the pot.
Add oil and fry off the beef. Break the beef up and it fries so that you have small bits of texture, not a solid mass and not pureed mush. When it’s cooked, add it to the pot.
Add more oil, and do the same with the pork. When it’s cooked, throw it in.
Trim anything nasty off the chicken livers and try them slowly in a little more oil. When they’re mostly cooked, hook them out and chop them finely. If they’re still looking pink, throw them back in the pan for a couple of minutes, then add them to the pot. (Trust me, this is a lot cleaner than chopping them before you fry them. I learnt this the hard way.)
Add salt and pepper to the pot and give everything a good stir. If it’s looking a bit too dry, add a little more wine.
Leave the slow cooker on ‘Low’ overnight. Check that nothing is burning, add more liquid if needed to stop anything drying out too badly. Either turn off and leave to cool during the day or leave it on low until you get home.
In my opinion this is best served with rough-die pasta tubes or twists since they pick the sauce up better than spaghetti does. Serve with a bit more chopped basil and a handful of grated Italian cheese.
Tags: bacon, basil, beef mince, chicken liver, garlic, onion, pork mince, red wine, savoury, slow cooker, tomato, tomato puree
