Thursday 9 February 2012

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 11

It’s taken eleven days to get to the sensational spaghetti bolognese on my Change4Life Supermeals Challenge. This is one that most people would have predicted to be among the 14 recipes, being such a popular pasta dish.

The Change4Life booklet provides a good, quick-and-easy, and health-conscious Spaghetti Bolognese recipe (see below). Everyone really enjoyed this one, which I served with a grated hard cheese and a tomato salad.

My main suggestion is that you could replace the courgette with celery, which is a more typical Bolognese ingredient. I added a chopped stick of celery (from a plentiful supply in the fridge). The courgette went in too, although I felt it worked against the richness I seek in a spaghetti sauce.

The recipe suggests a cooking time of 20 minutes, but if you have time it might benefit from a little longer. I tend to cook two versions of Spaghetti Bolognese: one along these quick, easy and inexpensive lines, and a more luxurious version using pancetta, wine and nutmeg that I let simmer for a couple of hours to enhance the texture and the blending of flavours (see link below).

The 300g of spaghetti in the recipe is exactly equivalent to a 4 person serving, according to our free Vale of Glamorgan spaghetti measure (3 + 1 through the holes).

The recipe offers as a tip (Italian food purists look away now) that you can use any pasta shapes you like and swap any of the vegetables for your favourites.

sensational spaghetti bolognese (lower case from the recipe book by the way).

The ingredients: 300g lean minced beef, 1 large onion chopped, 2 crushed garlic cloves, 400g tin tomatoes, 2 tbsp tomato puree, 2 tsp dried mixed herbs, 1 red pepper chopped, 200g mushrooms, 1 medium carrot finely chopped, 1 medium courgette chopped, 150ml reduced-salt stock, 300g dried spaghetti, ground black pepper.

The method: brown mince and add onion. After a few minutes stirring, add the rest of the ingredients (except spaghetti), boil and simmer 10 mins. Cook spaghetti and serve with the sauce.

431 kcals per portion.

Change4Life:

You only have one day left (Friday 10 February 2012) to register if you want a free Supermeals booklet.

Other ways of approaching spaghetti Bolognese:

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