Spicy Beef & Sausage Bolongnacurry - Sent In By Shegetz

SPICY BEEF AND SAUSAGE BOLOGNACURRY

Description:
A curious mix of Italian and Indian sauces with an awful lot of spices. It takes quite a bit of effort to prepare, but it's very much worth it, and it's very hard to finish in one sitting with 2-3 people due to the sheer amount of food it produces. Probably not good for anything other than a very big dinner with a lot of sitting down afterwards, and not recommended for anyone who can't handle their spicy food.

Feeds: 3-4, or 2-3 if you're feeling extra peckish.

Ingredients:
- 1x Tin of chopped tomatoes.
- 1x Long spurt of tomato puree.
- 4x tsp. Sharwood's Madras Curry Powder
- A few splashes of chilli sauce (I recommend Encona Hot Pepper Sauce)
(Or you can replace the above with a jar of a Ragu sauce of your choice and a few spoons of Patak's Madras Sauce).
- 1x pack of good quality beef mince
- 3x sausages of your choice (Sicillian ones are lovely)
- 1x Jar (200g) of sliced jalapeno peppers (don't worry, you won't be using them all)
- 3x Large closed-cup mushrooms.
- 0.5x Pepper (Red works best).
- 0.5x One spanish onion.
- 1x h/tbsp. Mediterranean Herbs.
- 1x h/tbsp. Crushed chillis.
-Garlic (crushed or fresh) to taste.
- Enough spaghetti per person.
- Pesto if you've got any.

Preparation:

- Take a frying pan and one saucepan, deposit the sausages into the frying pan with some oil and put the mince in the frying pan with the same, on a medium heat. Use the time it takes for the mince to cook through, breaking it up occasionally, to chop the onion, pepper, mushrooms and, if you're using it, fresh garlic.

- Once the mince is almost done, take the sausages out of the frying pan (don't worry if they're not quite done, they're going back into the heat anyway) and chop them into sections about a centimetre long and mix them in with the vegetables you just chopped - put this whole mixture in with the mince and stir it in, don't add the chillis yet as it ruins their flavour if they're cooked too much.

- If you're going the chopped-tomatoes route, open the tin of chopped tomatoes and drain the surface water off. Pour these into your (hopefully quite large by this point) saucepan and mix them in thoroughly, with the spurt of puree, curry powder and chilli sauce. Mix it all up thoroughly and hopefully it will be smelling very nice with a good amount of sauce in now. If you're going the prepared-sauce route (it's easier, trust me) now is the time to add it all - keep adding the Madras sauce until it smells and looks delicious.

- Now is the time to add the crushed chillis, herbs and - if you want it - crushed garlic. Also, if you've got some Pesto to use, add a couple of teaspoonfuls to the mix. Stir again and then add the jalapenos and mix them up as well. This part is basically complete now, we're going to let it reduce for a few minutes while we do the quick-cook spaghetti, so turn the heat down to a simmer and let the flavours mix.

- Spaghetti, boiling water, five minutes. The easy part, just poke at it with a spoon every now and then to avoid it coming out as one stringy lump, drain and divide up on the plates. By this point the tomatoey abomination in the saucepan will have blended nicely, so it's time to start serving that up. It should have a lot of spice but not enough to completely mask the tomatoey undertones and, depending on your taste for curry, will be anywhere from a dark oaky brown to a vivid red. Using Korma sauce instead of madras sauce will yield a bright orange, creamier flavour that's quite nice as well.