Saturday night sauce with Pasta

I tend to cook a roast dinner on Sunday and see that as the "first" meal of the week.  Of course, it's not necessarily meat and it not necessarily roasted... but you get the idea.

One of the results of this is that I like to use up whatever is in the fridge on a Saturday night, that is if I haven't been dragged out to eat in a restaurant somewhere....  Well, I can live in hope can't ???

The way this meal often works is I think of a dish I would quite like to make, but then simply adapt it as I cook so that I can include whatever I want to use up.

This week, I decided to make a spaghetti bolognese, although I'm sure the purists will realise that it is far removed from the true bolognese sauce served in Bologna.   This one turned out quite nice so I have tried to remember what I did....

INGREDIENTS

about 400gms ground beef
1 can plum tomatoes
1 medium Onion
1 rasher of bacon
1 nice eating apple
a few peas
Mushrooms
a handful of herbes de Provence
a lot of concentrated tomato purée
Some apple juice
enough spaghetti for 4

METHOD

• In a frying pan I fried the beef and the herbes de provence in a little olive oil then set aside in a saucepan
• Next I fried the onion, roughly chopped, again in a drop of olive oil and added to the sauce pan
• The rasher of bacon was next, torn into little pieces and fried before adding to the sauce pan
• Into the saucepan I then added the can of tomatoes, the tomato purée, the apple, peeled and cored and cut into small pieces and the apple juice to keep it moist
• At this point I also added a slug of sherry as I didn't have any red wine open
• The fridge revealed a small dish of left over cooked peas and these were added to the pot as well as all the mushrooms I found
• I brought everything to a rolling boil for a minute or two and then reduced the heat to a simmer for about 30 mins
• Whilst that was cooking, I dropped the spaghetti into a large sauce pan of boiling salted water to cook
• When cooked, I drained the spaghetti, rinsed with boiling water, returned to the pan, added a little olive oil, neated it and then shook the pan vigorously to coat before turning out onto the serving dish and piling the sauce in the middle
• Garnish with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese and some fresh parsley