Mac ‘n cheese with creamy bolognese

Mac ‘n cheese has to be one of my favourite comfort foods and when you add a hearty bolognaise sauce into the mix, it becomes just that much more comforting. Don’t you agree?

I don’t usually use a recipe when making a bolognaise and just cook by instinct. I sometimes add celery and carrot, and other times I add bacon. I often use oregano as a herb, and generally like to include tomato paste to intensify the tomato flavour. Its always a case of a bit of this, a splash of that, and whatever herb I have lying around.

Lots of herbs

Here I decided to make it a bit differently and I also wrote the recipe down. I happened to have parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme on hand, so decided to go with all of these. Why not? Simon and Garfunkel wrote a song about them, so they must be good together.

Rosemary is not what I would typically add, but my mom used to use it in her bolognaise and it brought back memories of her which kinda made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Always make more!

Because I live alone I didn’t eat the whole thing and froze off a few portions for later consumption. The later consumption has already taken place (I did this a while ago), and was so thrilled to have written the recipe down. It is a dish I will definitely want to make again. Exactly like I did it here.

Top tip on making the mince from Gordon Ramsay

Here I followed a little technique I picked up from Gordon Ramsay on his ‘Ultimate Cooking Course’ – which is to fry the meat further than you would normally, until all the liquid has cooked off and the meat starts to caramelise.

The browning that happens to the meat is called the Maillard reaction and is when the protein in the meat changes to sugar compounds, and in the process different flavours are created.

It makes so much sense to me to make sure the mince gets to this stage, so when you add all the other sauce components, they build on the base flavour.

I have taken to adding miso paste to a lot of my savoury and meaty recipes, it adds so much umami (savoury taste) and depth. As its fairly flavour neutral, it amplifies the other flavours in the dish.

See the recipe for this awesome bolognaise mac ‘n cheese…