Take one base sauce
I love cooking but let’s be honest, on a Monday after a hard day at work who wants to be in the kitchen for a very long time? Monday meals need to be something you can either put into the oven or cook in under 20 mins something with minimal input.
Fridays are much the same, another day you don’t want to spend ages cooking, it is a day to the break open the brandy and have something tasty, ‘naughty’ and quick.
One of the things I like to do over the weekend when I have some time is to batch cook and freeze to make the week days easier - especially if I know we have things on or that my day job is going to be busy.
I love Bolognese for a few reasons. Firstly it is the first meal I remember making with my mum. Pasta where and when I grew up was a bit exotic at the time (if you can beleive that) and I have a vivid memory of my mum with a huge beaming smile while we cooked because this was a special meal. As we ate we used to get covered in flecks of tomato sauce as we sucked up the long pasta (which was all that was available in our shops).
Secondly I used to cook it a lot when Victoria and Matt were young, Matt used to like it with curly pasta which for some cute reason he called Scooby pasta. Both of them loved it and I can still remember the smiles around the table as we ate. My food memories are so precious, for me it really is a way of expressing my love.
It is so versatile and you can make so many things with it to keep it interesting. The thing to do is make a huge batch of Bolognese sauce (double my sauce recipe) and divide it into 3. You can have a pasta bake the day you make it (let’s say on the weekend), keep a third back for spaghetti Bolognese during the week and freeze a lasagne for a Monday when you just don’t want to cook. Or, for a real weekend treat, try my cheesy pasta bake, the cheese goes into large pasta shells and goes golden and tasty and delicious!
Bolognese classically is a meat based sauce (or ragu) that originated in the Italian city of Bologna. If you’ve ever travelled to Italy and had Bolognese you’ll know it is very different from the pasta dish we enjoy here. In Italy it tends to be paler and more creamy and much less about the tomato. A lot of the recipes I have seen also have a mix of meats rather than just beef.
The version we enjoy in the UK has been changed a huge amount from the traditional regional dish. It is full of tomato and very rich with a deep flavour and paired with spaghetti which is not at all traditional. Most houses throughout the UK have cooked some form of Bolognese at one point and another and a recent survey found that spaghetti Bolognese tops the charts for the top 10 meals that British people repeat on a loop week in week out.
Topped with a cheese sauce Matt’s Scooby pasta it is beyond special.
My vegetarian/vegan versions of lasagne, spaghetti Bolognese, Cheesy pasta bake and Scooby pasta are made using Quorn when vegetarian or Viveria mince when I am cooking vegan but you really can use whatever you prefer. My vegan milk and cream of choice is Oatly.
Cheesy pasta bake
Vegan cheesy pasta bake