Spaghetti with meat in tomato sauce (for kids)

I’ll come clean. On Friday I made Ninka lunch (turkey strips) and I made a double portion of turkey. That way I could reheat it on Saturday (in the frying pan. I don’t hold with microwaves, and not just because I haven’t got one, which I haven’t). I made the mashed potatoes fresh and swapped the cucumber salad for sweet carrots (the recipe couldn’t be simpler: peel and grate a carrot and sweeten it with sugar). I spent Saturday finishing off the stuffed cabbage rolls.

Today, though, is Sunday. The first Sunday in December, at that. A chilly one. And Sunday lunch should be a two-course affair 😉 So I made chicken broth (using my broth recipe, pretty much the only change being that I used 4 wings instead of the piece of chicken), and served Ninka’s with rice (she prefers it to pasta and calls it “rice soup”). For the second course I decided on spaghetti, something along the lines of a Bolognese.

How does it differ from a classic Bolognese? Truth be told, I don’t know. I’ve never tried to get to the bottom of what actually defines that kind of sauce. Maybe you’ll think it is a classic Bolognese. More so than the one in this recipe, anyway.

What matters most, though? I was making this pasta to suit my daughter, so:

• it can’t be spicy
• it can’t look as if there are any vegetables in it
• it has to disguise the meat (the biggest challenge)

One thing I do think matters a lot for this sauce is a long cooking time. I rarely braise a pasta sauce like this, but this one braised for ages (meaning it simmered with the lid on). Ninka ate the whole portion (you can see it in the photo). I just mixed the meat into the spaghetti before serving hers (part of the meat camouflage). I liked it, even though it wasn’t spicy.

At a glance:

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 3 hours

Serves: 1 child and her dad for two days

How many calories? Depends how much pasta you pile on

Ingredients for a child’s lunch:

• 400 grams of minced pork shoulder
• a clove of garlic
• 500 ml tomato passata (from a carton)
• two medium spring onions
• salt
• half a pinch of ground black pepper
• two tablespoons of ground herbes de Provence
• two teaspoons of sugar
• pasta (I used classic spaghetti, as the title suggests)
• olive oil

The recipe (quick to get going, leaving time to make dessert):

Well then. I start straight after breakfast (pancakes, of course, it being Sunday). I heat olive oil in a saucepan and add the meat. Straight away I season it with salt (by eye, taking care not to overdo it), a few specks of pepper (I remember it’s for Ninka, so I go easy) and the herbes de Provence. I stir the meat thoroughly with a spoon. I peel and finely chop a clove of garlic and add it to the frying meat.

I fry the meat for about 10 minutes, breaking it up and stirring often so it doesn’t burn. But I do want it browned. Once it is, I pour in the carton of passata. I add the roughly chopped spring onions, stir and turn down the “flame”.

For the next 10–15 minutes I stir often. Then I add about a cup of water and cover the pan. I turn the “flame” down further (as low as 3 on my scale of 1 to 10) and put the lid on. I cook it for about 2 hours, giving it a stir now and then. Then I take the lid off and cook it down over a low heat for about 30 minutes, so the meat ends up in a fairly thick sauce.

I cook the spaghetti and, once it’s drained and dry (no water dripping off), put it on a plate and spoon the meat on top. For my daughter, I mix it all together before serving. On mine I add a few shavings of Parmesan. Simple and good. Enjoy!