When the Stranger cooks: Fettucine with rich meat sauce.

Home-made gourmet burger, even the patties were made from scratch!

I realise it's been a long time since I shared an original recipe. I have certainly not stopped cooking, but was too lazy to take enough nice pictures to make some recipe posts.

Baked seafood with lemon and potatoes

However, due to a couple of requests on my Facebook share last night, even though I lack pictures, I think I should share how I cooked my Fettucine with rich meat sauce, a dish which is frequently seen in my house in different variations.

Almost all the ingredients

Ingredients, serves 2-3:

1. Half a large onion, diced.
2. 250g of raw gourmet sausage (I used Sloane's Botifarra), break the casing and squeeze out the sausage meat. You could use normal minced beef or pork as well, but using good raw sausages is a cheat that will help you form a beautiful base for the sauce.
3. 1 can of plum tomato, use imported ones from Italy/Spain, remove seeds if you do not want the sauce to be too sour.
4. 200g of cherry tomato, halved.
5. Half a cup of white wine.
6. 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, optional, but it makes the sauce taste richer and fruitier.
7. Dried herbs include paprika powder, cracked black pepper, oregano, a little of each according to your personal taste.
8. Salt to taste.

Complete sauce, absolutely divine.

Cooking procedure:

• Saute onions in a medium-hot pan with some oil, the key is to sweat them slowly to release their sweetness and not burn them.
• When the onions have softened and turned a little brown, switch to high heat and put the sausage mince in to sear. You want to have a nice brown char on the mince so that it gives the sauce a depth of flavour.
• When browning the meat, add some cracked black pepper, paprika powder and oregano to your personal taste. I personally love a lot of paprika and black pepper in my sauces.
• When the meat has achieved a nice sear, keep the pan hot and add in the balsamic vinegar so that it reduces nicely, then add the white wine to deglaze the pan and form the beautiful base of the sauce.
• Pour in the can of tomatoes and the halved cherry tomatoes, mix well, add in another half a can of water using the empty tomato can. Turn to medium heat, cover and leave it to simmer. You can simply use canned tomatoes, but I always like to add some fresh tomatoes to give it a more refreshing element.
• When the fresh tomatoes soften to become part of the sauce and the sauce reduces to a nice consistency (like the bolognaise sauce you eat in a good restaurant), you can give it a taste and add a final bit of pepper and salt to your liking.

Of course, the dish will not be complete without your favourite pasta. I love to use either linguine or fettucine for my dishes, but this sauce works well with any type of pasta you prefer. Around 80-120g of pasta should be a good amount for an adult.

When cooking pasta, please salt the water generously, otherwise your dish will taste horribly bland, and lastly, follow the cooking instructions on your pasta packaging carefully, DO NOT OVERCOOK YOUR PASTA. Any great sauce will be in vain if you serve it with fat, soggy noodles.

So there you have it, my Fettucine with rich meat sauce, a simple dish that you can whip up within an hour and make the people in your house very happy indeed.

Try it and let me know what you think of it!