Spicy Pasta Sauce Recipe

Last night was nothing short of a miracle. I managed to cook something that was edible, that was not burned and was actually enjoyed by people other than me pretending it was good to save face. Best of all – I cooked it from scratch. The anticlimactic part of this story was that it was just pasta sauce which most people can do with their eyes closed, Yet, for me, this was a small victory in the cooking world.

Before I bask in your praise I want to give credit where credit is due. This recipe was given to me by my good friend Helen Bullock, with some alterations made by my own good self. She can be found over on anseo-a-mhuinteoir.com and on Twitter at @AnseoAMuinteoir . Go check her out and she might share some more tasty treat with you. Now, onto the cooking.

Ingredients:

1 tin of tomatoes

1 onion

4 cloves of garlic (more/less depending on your taste)

Hot chili paste

200g minced beef

Mixed herbs

4 handfuls of pasta

1 vegetable stock cube

2 tablespoons of white flour

1 tablespoon of sunflower oil

Firstly, heat the oil in a medium-sized saucepan. While you are waiting for it to heat, finely chop the onion and garlic. When the oil is hot, add the onion and garlic to the saucepan and sauté until lightly browned.

Take the saucepan off the ring and add the tinned tomatoes, hot chili paste, vegetable stock cube and mixed herbs. I used half of the shown tube of paste as I prefer my food spicy. Add much less if you want don’t want the sauce to be really spicy, or alternatively, use tomato paste. The herbs I used were thyme, basil and oregano, and added them without measuring. I added just enough boiling water to dissolve the stock cube before mixing it in. As I like my sauce thick, I also added 2 tablespoons of white flour. This is totally optional and again, dependent of your own personal taste.

Bring the sauce to a boil, then turn down the heat and let it simmer while you prepare the other ingredients. I cooked the pasta in another saucepan in salted water, and the minced meat in the frying pan. I cooked 200 g of minced meat which was too much for just one person. This amount of meat is good for 2 people, or 3 at a stretch. Once these ingredients are cooked, you are done!

I prepared a plate of pasta and just the sauce separately as I do not eat meat. The minced meat was added to the rest of the sauce and then served on top of the pasta. The below pictures are not the most Instagram friendly, but I can assure you that they tasted great!

As you managed to make your way to the bottom of this post, I have added a bonus recipe – garlic bread! It is not the most conventional garlic bread as I had no baguette. Instead, I  modeled it on the garlic bread served in one of my favorite restaurants here in Berlin, Route 66. What I done was minced more garlic cloves and then mixed them with Kerrygold butter. I then toasted the bread, spread the butter on top and added some chopped cherry tomatoes. The slices were then placed under the grill to ensure the butter was nice and bubbly. The end result is a tasty addition to your pasta dish!

I really enjoyed making this dish and certainly want to try my hand at some more (easy) recipes. If you have any such recipes hidden away on your blog, link them down below and I will do my best to keep them edible.