Spaghetti with a spicy kangaroo and mushroom sauce

Kangaroo mince is wonderful. Cheap, lean and tasty. It works well in pasta sauces. You could use it in place of beef in bolognese, if you wanted. This, of course, isn't bolognese. Bolognese--real, honest-to-God bologonese--includes at least two meats. Mine includes four. More if you count the plethora of pig-related products I throw in in addition to the mince.

Too, the addition of curry powder. Adding curry powder to a meaty pasta sauce, for me, is a nostalgic thing. My father used to do with his heavily Australianised 'bolognese' and to this day I can remember the smell of the stuff wafting through the house on the one evening a month or so he'd be in the kitchen.



Ingredients:

600 g kangaroo mince
500 mL beef stock
handful of mushrooms of your choosing, sliced
100 g tomato paste
1/3 cup brandy
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 celery sticks, diced
2 chillies, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 large onion, diced
1 1/2 tbs hot curry powder
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt

In a large sauceheat, heat some oil over a low flame. Add the onion, garlic, chillies, celery and carrot. Stir and fry for five minutes, then add a tablespoon of curry powder. Stir and fry for another five minutes, then add the mince. Stir well. Brown the mince over the course of 2-3 minutes, then add the brandy, stirring as you do. Let it reduce, then spoon in the tomato paste. Stir it in, add the stock and cover the pan. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. Remove the lid. Stir in the remaining curry powder. Simmer for a further 25 minutes, then add the mushrooms. Simmer for five more minutes, then cover the pan and take it off the heat. Let it sit this way while you bring some lightly salted water to the boil and cook some spaghetti. Don't cook the spaghetti according to packet instructions--use your senses by tasting the pasta when you think it's about done. It should be soft, but have just a little bite to it. Al dente. Toss the pasta and sauce together.

Bolognese sauce

For most Australians, Bolognese sauce contains a single meat product--beef mince. True Bolognese sauce, though, contains at least two. The recipe below was inspired by a recipe I dug up that purported to be as authentic as they come. It contained beef mince, pork mince, sausage, panchetta and ham. Curiously, it didn't have any basil or garlic--ingredients many of us consider very Italian. It was interesting to see how different this recipe was from what I'd grown up with. My dad--not an Italian--regularly made Bolognese with spaghetti. Indeed, it was the only thing he knew how to cook. It was different, even, from some of the more 'modern' versions I've seen whipped up by Maggie Beer and Jamie Oliver. It was interesting, to be sure, but I couldn't help but feel that some of those 'modern' touches were needed. So, off the top of my head, I can tell you that the idea of including a diced chilli comes from Mr. Oliver. I saw him do it and thought, yeah, it needed to be done. The chicken livers came from Maggie Beer. She reckons they add a lot to the flavour and aroma of the sauce and she's right. The veal and beef combo? Well, I'll claim that as my own. Having veal in addition to beef, instead of just beef, adds to the complexity of the flavour of the sauce. Feel free to substitute the 200 g of veal with a further 200 g of beef, though. As for the garlic, well, to me, as a non-Italian, as someone who's grown up on Australianised Bolognese, excluding garlic of all things seems sinful. And the basil? Same thing, really.

The quantities below make for a lot of sauce. Don't worry, this stuff keeps well in the fridge (2-3 days) and freezer (2 months) Indeed, it's even better on the second day.

Ingredients:

250 g pork mince
200 g beef mince
200 g veal mince (substitute with more beef mince if you must)
200 g chicken livers
200 g tomato paste
100 g panchetta, diced
50 g ham, diced
2 cups (500 mL) beef stock
3/4 cup (185 mL) red wine
4 cloves of garlic, diced
3 dried bay leaves, crumbled
2 sticks of celery, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 chilli, diced (seeds removed)
1 Italian pork sausage, roughly chopped
1 onion, diced
handful of fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
a touch of freshly grated nutmeg
a grind of black pepper
sea salt

In a saucepan, fry the panchetta until crispy. Remove from pan and set aside.

Fry the chicken livers until they've got a bit of colour--perhaps 30 seconds--and then set them aside to cool. When they're cool, roughly chop them.

Give the saucepan a clean, if need be, and then fry the carrot, celery, chilli, garlic and onion until they begin to soften. At this point, add the sausage and mince. Fry until mince has a bit of colour. Return the liver and panchetta to the saucepan.

Add the wine. Stir. Add the tomato paste. Fry for a further 4 minutes, then add the beef stock, along with a little nutmeg, the basil leaves and the bay leaves. When sauce starts to bubble, reduce heat and cover. Simmer for a hour, removing the lid occasionally to stir. When the hour is up, remove the lid. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for a further 30 minutes. Then add the ham. Simmer for 30 more minutes then allow to cool.

If you're planning on making spaghetti Bolognese, heat some of the sauce over a low flame in a saucepan while cooking some spaghetti. The general rule is 80-100 g of pasta per person. Dress with a few basil leaves and a splash of extra virgin olive oil.