Spaghetti Bolognese by N.O. Papa

Spaghetti Bolognese has got to be one of the most variably reliable dishes in the world. It seems that no matter which corner of the planet you visit, there'll be some vendor foisting the stuff on their craving-ridden customers, with mixed results, almost all on the "bad" end of the eating spectrum. Ahh yes, the humble spag bol. Ever alert to the call to action. How we love you.

It's a brutal confession for a try-hard gourmet to make, but: I've had traditional bolognese with veal and pork mince, and hated it. My tastebuds don't "do" pork or veal at the best of times, and the lack of thick tomato sauce to disguise their flavours meant I couldn't even PRETEND to be enjoying the dish. Yeah. If I were a true foodie I would've choked it down with a bottle of expensive wine and waxed lyrical about the refreshing authenticity - but I'm not, and thus it went in the bin instead.

I've had spag bol in Indonesia; where lamb mince was used instead of beef; and where commercial tomato and sweet chilli sauce replaced the more standard tomato accompaniments. My best friend told me it was cat meat. That didn't stop me hoeing into it, but the interpretation (like many Euro dishes served in non-Western countries) certainly wasn't something I'd be repeating in my own kitchen in a hurry.

I've had spaghetti in Japan. Oh boy, was that an experience. Instead of the dried or fresh wheat based pasta I was expecting, we were served up egg noodles cooked al dente. The sauce was punctuated with mushrooms - shiitake mushrooms. It was hilariously brilliant, a true example of adapting a dish to suit the ingredients available locally.

(For those who are wondering what the hell I was doing eating faux-Italian in Japan - I'm from Sydney. We eat meals from a different cuisine every night of the week. I don't care how refined a gastronomic culture is, my guttiwuts aren't programmed to eat it at every meal for an eternity - especially where no matter what dish you choose there's only a couple of distinct flavours present, as is the case with Japanese food. Sorry Nippon. But I digress.)

I've said earlier in this blog that Spaghetti Bolognese is the traditional Friday night meal at my parent's place. My mum makes it with less tomato paste and more tinned tomatoes. My dad makes it with less tinned tomatoes and more tomato paste. Both my brother and I make it with a fairly balanced blend of the two - not too watery, as is the case with the tomato-heavy version; and not too thick, as is the case with the paste-heavy version. None of them add carrot or celery into the soffrito or anchovies as are my most recent adaptions to our family's recipe.

It's a Friday here in Sydney, and after the vast disappointment of my Christmas Pudding (that story coming soon!) I needed something easy and reliable to cook. This utterly Anglocised bolognese delivers - it's like a hug in a meal for me. Although I tweak this recipe almost every time I cook it, these are the basic bones of my old faithful.

Spaghetti Bolognese by N.O. Papa

Ingredients
Olive oil
500g beef mince
1 brown onion, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, trimmed and finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3/4 cup red wine
3 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp chopped semi dried tomatoes
1 400g tin whole tomatoes, chopped up with a knife a bit
1 1/2 400g tin water
2 tsp chopped anchovies in oil
2 tsp dried oregano
2 bay leaves
1 beef stock cube (told you this was unashamedly Ocker)
Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper to taste

Spaghetti - cooked according to the instructions on the packet just before serving time

Method
1. Heat a couple of good glugs of oil in a large heavy wok / frypan over a medium flame. Add the onion, celery and carrot, and cook, stirring, until they begin to soften. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant.
2. Add the beef mince and cook, stirring, until well browned. Add the wine, stir, and allow to bubble until wine has reduced in volume by half. Add anchovies, semi-dried tomatoes, stock cube and oregano, stir. Add tinned tomatoes and water, stir and allow to bubble for two or three minutes.
3. Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer for about an hour, seasoning to taste with the sauces, salt and pepper about halfway through. Remove bay leaves before serving. Gosh, that was hard, wasn't it? Reward yourself with some wine, go on.

To serve - top a mountain of spaghetti with the bolognese sauce. Sprinkle with parmesan and sing "on top of ol' Smokey, all covered with cheese." Look sheepish. Accompany with more wine, garlic bread made with non-fancy bread and a garden salad made with non-fancy veggies and non-fancy vinagerette. Be transported back to a suburban Italo-Australian restaurant circa 1988, be glad you didn't order the fish and chips, smile.

Cabbage Rolls by N.O Soobdyet

My earliest memories of cabbage bear no resemblence to the maligned tales of boiled to near-death grey-white leaves common to anyone who's choked down dinner cooked by elderly Anglo-Saxon relatives. Far from the horrors of wartime recipes, or the gastronomic warfare of 1985's cabbage soup diet; they involve family and a great sense of where food comes from.

My Oma makes a magnificent blaukraut, with red cabbage, cloves, green apples and salt, sugar and vinegar to taste. I've yet to perfect the dish myself, I doubt I will, considering the old dear has a good sixty years of cooking on me. It's one of the dishes I secretly hope she'll whip up whenever I visit, along with the other Deutsch classics she has up her short sleeves.

My Dad used to grow cabbages in his vegetable patch during winter. When they weren't being attacked by snails, they had to be closely guarded against attack by my younger brother, who liked to "help" by pulling them out - all of them - and hosing and boxing them whilst Dad was at work.

Whilst I remember having cabbage rolls for dinner as a child, my main memories of the vegetable involved it being lightly steamed as a sweet yet savoury side, or served as saukraut alongside meat-laden meals. Thanks to the protective culinary web provided by my family it wasn't until I went to boarding school that I realised just how bad it could be when cooked incorrectly. Luckily common sense prevailed and those nightmare-inducing experiences didn't turn me off it for life. These days we don't have it that often, but when we do it's generally served as part of a greater good rather than by itself on the edge of the plate.

For this dish, I've adapted a sauce recipe from Iain Hewitson's "Never Trust a Skinny Cook", the title of which I take as gospel in my own waistline pursuits*. I figure he's probably making enough money through his website subscriptions to warrant me doing a bit o' culinary shoplifting from his cookbook, especially considering the number of man hours I've put into watching him and Mr Moon of a quiet weekday afternoon.

*(N.B. This mantra, of course, does not apply to chefs, who create food for a multitude of reasons, the vast majority of them less trustworthy than the Daily Telegraph.)

Cabbage Rolls by N.O Soobdyet

Ingredients

Sauce
Olive oil
1 brown onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sambal olek
2 tins whole tomatoes, smashed up a bit with a knife
1 tin water
Balsalmic vinegar
Sugar
2 anchovies, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup mozzarella cheese, grated, to assemble

Filling
400g minced beef or lamb (whichever you prefer)
1 carrot, peeled and finely diced
1 stick celery, finely diced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon fresh chopped oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1/4 sauce mixture reserved from above
Salt and pepper to taste

Wrapping
1 small savoy cabbage (this time I used Chinese wongbok because procuring a whole, non-cut Euro cabbage on Sunday afternoon proved beyond my hunting and gathering skills... I don't recommend it as the flavour is negligable and the leaves are too watery and yeah, the whole thing is pretty blah actually.)

Method
Pre-heat oven to 190 degrees celcius

Sauce
1. Take a large heavy frypan and slosh in enough olive oil to cover the bottom, then heat over a medium flame.
2. Throw in the onion and cook, stirring, until softened. Add the garlic and sambal olek and cook until fragrant.
3. Add the tinned tomatoes, water, anchovies and sugar and balsalmic vinegar to taste. Stir well, then reduce heat and simmer for about half an hour, stirring occasionally, until thick. Remove sauce from pan and set aside.

Wrapping
1. Bring a large pot of water to the boil
2. Plunge the entire cabbage into the water for several minutes until it begins to soften. Remove, drain and then strip the whole leaves from the outer layers working inwards. Set aside.

Filling
1. Add another slosh of olive oil into the same pan used for the sauce (don't bother washing it, ya sook). Add the mince and cook, stirring, until browned.
2. Add the celery and carrot, stir. Add the white wine and cook for a minute or two, stirring.
3. Add the oregano, tomato paste, reserved sauce and seasoning to taste, stir and simmer over a low heat for ten minutes.
4. Remove from heat and set aside until cool enough to handle.

To Assemble
1. Take one softened cabbage leaf. Place 1 tablespoon filling at one end of the leaf, leaving a lip to fold over. Fold over lip and sides, then roll, tucking edges in as you go. Set aside and repeat with remaining leaves and filling.
2. Take a square oven-proof dish and pour half the sauce into the bottom. Place the cabbage rolls on top. Pour over the remainder of the sauce and top with cheese.
3. Bake in oven for twenty five minutes or until cheese is golden brown.

Serve with steamed rice and the satisfaction of knowing you've just turned a much-maligned vegetable into a mouth party. Well done, you. TAKIN' IT BACK!

Beef Stroganoff by Ruski Nail

A lot of things have happened since the 12th of August, when I last threw up a concoction on the hallowed (ha!) virtual pages of this blog.

I make no apologies for my absence. Well, maybe just a few. It's not that I WASN'T cooking; it's just that in the moments that my stove-chain reached more than five metres from the kitchen I was tied up with the arduous pursuit of planning a wedding whilst grappling at every corner with my inner Bridezilla. Don't get me wrong - being married is great. Weddings are not. I'm not sure if/when I'll recover from the stress involved in dealing with binty venue coordinators, disorganised caterers and overbearing relatives... sometimes all in the same hour. SUUUCCKKKSSS.

But you know, live and learn, live and learn. And The Bloke and I did get a smashing excuse for a south east Asian eating holiday out of the deal, so I can't complain too much. I'll be filling in the gaps in this blog retrospectively over the next week or so. Maybe.

But now - it's a neo-typical Tuesday evening here in the recently un-sinned Casa del Bitch'n'Bloke; in that The Bloke is having a rehearsal with the reborn line up of his band... and that I, as the feminine component of this newly-wed bliss, felt it my duty to whip something up for him to eat before he gets down to the serious business of pushing keys and twisting knobs.

Pun intended. Artists. You know how they are.

I don't really have a clever tie in to explain why I decided on beef stroganoff for dinner. I can honestly say that although I have, like every good woman raised with nouvelle cuisine* in the heady gastronomical heights of the mid-eighties, I can't remember the last time that a morsel of it passed my lips. Probably the best explanation for its presence on our menu is the fact that the charming butcher at the Marrickville Metro had some pre-cut strips in his shop window on Sunday night, and it got me thinking about it for more than five minutes. It doesn't take that long to cook, plus, if you have a bit too much wine whilst cooking STROGANOFF is a great word to shout out your kitchen window. So without further ado... STROGANOFF!

Beef Stroganoff by Ruski Nail

Ingredients
400g rump steak, cut into strips
1/2 cup plain flour, seasoned with freshly ground black pepper, sea salt and 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
30g butter
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 onion, thinly sliced
125g mushrooms, cliced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup sour cream

Method
1. Toss the beef strips in the seasoned flour and dust off the excess. Melt the butter in a large frypan / wok over a medium heat.
2. Chuck the onions into the pan and fry, stirring for a couple of minutes until they begin to soften. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant.
3. Add the beef and cook until well browned, stirring constantly.
4. Add the white wine and deglaze the plan, then let simmer until the wine is reduced by half.
5. Add the mushrooms and fry for a minute. Add the stock and tomato paste, stir well.
6. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about half an hour, until the beef is tender.
7. Add the sour cream and stir to heat through, then remove from heat. Don't let it bubble, comrade, unless you want your dinner to curdle like the USSR circa 1991.

Serve with buttered noodles (I use macaroni 'coz I'm retro-core and still pissy about the authenticity) and an assortment of steamed veggies. If you've saved enough rubles, perhaps a glass of zesty white or light red wine to cut through the cream would be noice on the side. Noice. Different. Unyooshual.

* (I've just checked the Wikipedia entry, and there are no words to describe the disappointment I am currently feeling after reading that it was first cooked in 19th century Russia and is thus somewhat more authentic than the 1985 Annual Blacktown RSL Members Dinner creation I was hoping to discover. NYET!)