Mike's pasta sauce
- Preparation and cooking time
- Total time
- More effort
- Serves 4
Ingredients
- 1 medium sized white or red onion finely chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 150g white mushrooms finely chopped
- 100g of bacon lardons, unsmoked
- 1 packet of parma ham, rolleach sheet up and chop acros the "roll"
- 250ml of tomato passata
- 100ml double cream
- Pepper
- NB it's important that the first three ingredients are finely chopped, take your time, the mushrooms should be almost "granular"
Method
- STEP 1Heat some neutral oil in a deep frying pan and when hot, but not really hot, add the lardons and the parma ham and fry until browned and a little crispy, the fat should come out of the bacon and this is part of the flavour. If there is excessive fat, you can consider taking a little out, but you need fat to cook the remaining ingredients
- STEP 2Then turn the heat down a little and add the onions and cook until soft but not too coloured, then add the garlic and the mushrooms
- STEP 3Keep cooking the mixture, the mushrooms will release their moisture and the mix needs to be cooked until it is a little sticky. This is quite important as the liquid in the sauce should come from the passata and cream
- STEP 4Add the passata, judge the amount so that the mix will coat pasta when the sauce is cooked. If you add too much, the sauce does not suffer if you wish to reduce it.
- STEP 5Cook the mix until the passata has lost its slightly raw flavour and the volume has reduced a little.
- STEP 6Adjust the seasoning, the ham and bacon is very salty so probably only add black pepper. Then add the cream until you like the colour and flavour, I add about 50ml and then taste and judge, its not vital to be accurate! Keep cooking after adding the cream to ensure the sauce is well mixed
- STEP 7Serve with your favourite pasta, I don't add any grated cheese, but that's up to you
- STEP 8All the ingredient amounts are pretty flexible!