Sauce for the soul

It was the excuse I needed to observe a cathartic kitchen ritual: making a batch of bolognese.

Does chicken soup make you better when you’re crook? Probably not, but it does make you feel better, which is nice. And making basic chicken soup is not very hard.

My friend Peter had a different kind of problem, one altogether more handicapping than a Readymix-through-the-olfactory-system head cold: he’d lost use of a paw for a month at a crucial point in the father-to-son kick-to-kick season.

“I guess the kids are going to have to cook for themselves,” he said via one-handed text message from hospital, being co-custodian of two typical (if rather wonderful) teenagers (i.e., no idea where food comes from, how it is prepared unless performed on television in a reality show, or how it is paid for).

It was exactly the excuse I needed to observe a cathartic kitchen ritual: I would make Pete a big batch of Bolognese sauce. Once a frequent joy, this has been knocked out of the home dinner routine by a significant other who has slowly extended her disdain for pork to pretty much all red meat, combined with an un-Australian indifference to pasta. Consequently, my version of the ubiquitous spag bol is now a rare and solitary pleasure. We’re working through a small issue here. But enough of the cracks in a veneer of domestic bliss.

I knew Pete and the kids loved spaghetti, so that was a good starting point, even if there was a time — so, so long ago, in our 20s, when we flatted together — that he actually struggled with boiling the stuff. He makes up for his lack of culinary endeavour with untold talents beyond the kitchen. Like kick-to-kick channelling the late, great Robbie Flower (a Melbourne Football Club hero, for everyone in the rugby states). I rushed to my local branch of half Australia’s supermarket duopoly for the fixings.

The quick version goes like this: mince equal quantities of pork and beef, about 500g in total, and season well. You can buy it minced, of course, but if you were ever thinking about buying a mincer, I’d strongly encourage it. The difference is surprising.

Whizz a carrot, a stick of celery, a few cloves of garlic and a chopped onion in the food processor. I know this is cheating, and doing it all with a sharp knife is better, but if you’ve bought the processor you may as well use it. Sauté the vegetables gently in olive oil for 10 minutes before placing the minced meat on the top, patting it down, and leaving for two or three minutes — heat rising from the bottom to part-cook the meat through — before stirring it through the sofrito to colour up the meat just a bit more.

Add a small can of tomato paste, stir, cook for another minute or so then add half a bottle of red wine and lift the temperature to boil the booze away to almost nothing. Almost dry. Add one and a half 400g cans of chopped tomatoes, a few bay leaves and cloves, and about 250ml of water. Then wait. Time pretty much does the rest. I’d figure on at least three hours of gentle cooking. You may find that a little sugar improves the flavour; it will depend on your tomatoes.

Allow to cool, then deliver to your friend’s house with some decent Parmesan and flat-leaf parsley to garnish. If you can be bothered, take some home-made pasta too.

It won’t fix broken fingers but everyone will feel a bit better, and that’s the point.