I Love Italian Food

I've haven't seen 'Marley & Me' personnaly, but I do love Italian food and often cook penne in a bolognese sauce! Here's my recipe for a good bolognese sauce...

Fry 500g of lean steak mince in some olive oil. (There shouldn't be any need to drain of excess fat if you use lean mince otherwise spoon away any fat). Once browned, add the sauce, made as follows:

Add the following into a 2 pint jug and blend:
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 green pepper (capsicum) roughly chopped
1 red pepper (capsicum) roughly chopped
1 large onion roughly copped
A good dash of virgin olive oil
2 large garlic cloves
1 level teaspoon each of oregano and thyme or 1 teaspoon of Mixed Italian herbs
Half a glass of light, fuity red wine (nothing too rich. A claret or rioja or Cotes de Rhone is excellent).

Once blended, add this to the mince and stir in.

Now hand-chop a couple of small, regular tomatoes and 4 or 5 peeled and de-stalked mushrooms. Add these to the sauce and stir in so they remain as larger pieces. (You don't add the mushrooms to the blended sauce as they darken it too much).

Let that simmer for around 5-10 minutes, stirring and adding some garlic sauce to taste.

In the meantime, add your penne (around 250g - about half a regular pack) to boiling water that has some virgin olive oil and Italian herbs bubbling away. This will add flavour to the pasta and keep it from sticking to the pan when it''s nearly cooked. Stir the penne regularly and rescue it from the water into a sieve as soon as it is 'al dente' (going soft but not mushy). Important: pour a kettle of boiling water over the penne in the sieve to drain off excess starch. Give it a good shake to drain it before serving.

You can serve it separately to the sauce (as a base with the sauce in the middle) or stir it into the sauce and serve together.

Grate some parmigiano cheese onto the top when serving (or dust it with a few teaspoons of grated italian cheese from a tub).

Alternatively, cook tagliatelle rather than penne pasta and stir this into the bolognese sauce. Either way - fabulous!

Bon Apetitte!