Simple meat sauce
No measuring, only eyeballing!
Last week, we moved into our new home! It's a beautiful Victorian house with a charming, sloping garden. Yesterday was our first rainy Sunday indoors, and it couldn’t have been more perfectly timed for a relaxed day. We started the morning with leftover custard pie from the day before (it was for Theo's birthday!) and spent the day pottering about the house. I did need to prepare our lunch tho, and to be honest I didn’t have much energy for anything too elaborate. So, I turned to one of my all-time favourite lazy meals – makaronia me kyma – a simple but delicious meat and tomato sauce typically served with pasta.
We enjoyed our meat sauce with boiled potatoes instead of pasta, which I mixed with chopped spring onions and fresh tarragon, then drizzled with extra virgin olive oil – so simple, yet so pleasing!
For the meat sauce, I started by gently frying chopped vegetables in extra virgin olive oil – a medium-sized onion, one carrot, and two garlic cloves. Once the onion softened and turned translucent, I added half a kilo of minced beef, a teaspoon of sweet paprika, two bay leaves, a small cinnamon stick, two allspice berries, two tablespoons of tomato paste, and a knob of butter. I like to brown the meat well to get those rich, caramelised bits for extra flavour, so I kept stirring until it was nicely browned. Then, I added two teaspoons of red wine vinegar (mine is infused with tarragon, but regular vinegar or red wine works just as well), letting it cook for a few seconds before stirring in about half a bottle (350g) of tomato passata. Sometimes tomatoes can be a bit sharp, so if needed, a touch of sugar or grape molasses balances the flavours beautifully.I seasoned it with salt, covered it with water, and brought it to a boil, then let it simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally and topping up the water as needed. To finish, I added a splash of extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper.
Big love, Despina xxx
