Spag bol has enjoyed a recent renaissance in the smoke&umami household due to Hannah’s current insatiable appetite for meat .. which she claims is a result of breast-feeding. But we can’t eat steak for every meal, even though she’d like to, so spag bol is making a regular appearance in our weekly roster.

In recent times I’d all but stopped making spaghetti bolognaise. Partly because Hannah claimed it gave her heartburn. But shamefully, I think it might be because it got a bit naff. What with all these purists like Carluccio telling us it doesn’t even exist in Italy. I guess everyone knows now it’s *correctly* a meat ragu, shouldn’t have tomatoes in it, and should be served with flat noodles – never spaghetti.

GET OUT! I’m sick of Italian food purists, especially as you can’t ever be right in Italy anyway, with disputes over recipes carried out with fierce localism. Two villages 5km apart will happily wage a bloody vendetta over whether it’s permitted to put a splosh of cream in a carbonara sauce (er, probably).

But, to be fair, I did find that I was getting bored with my usual, “traditional” recipe which was essentially onions, red wine, mince and tomatoes.

I’ve made it much more ragu-y by dialling down the tomatoes and adding beef stock.

But the thing that really makes this dish sexy again is the liberal addition of chicken livers, which gives it a proper grown-up taste that kids presumably would hate.

The other thing that’s rekindled my love of this dish is being able to make it in my pressure cooker (just like people did in the 70s/80s!). This means you can get it done in under an hour from start to finish and the results are as good, if not better than slow cooking.

And of course, this dish when done properly can serve up a huge whack of umami. Meat is a good source of umami, as are tomatoes and of course the obligatory parmesan on top. But there are plenty of ways to boost umami further; I use Worcestershire sauce (bet they don’t use that in Emilia-Romagna) and tomato paste. Some use fish sauce. A judicious splurt of umami paste wouldn’t necessarily be a bad call. And the Waitrose beef stock that’s branded Heston has konbu in it as well. No wonder it tastes so good!

And, to be fair to the Italians – serving this with a thick ribbon pasta like papardelle or tagliatelle is probably more appropriate than spaghetti. Don’t forget to add a a good knob of butter at the end.

The brave Felicity Cloake tackled spag blog on her “Perfection” series on the Guardian website – I don’t really agree with her conclusions, but it’s worth a read!

I reckon most readers of this blog have got their own recipe for spaghetti bolognaise. Here’s mine.

Ingredients

1kg beef mince, fatty
200-400g chicken livers, preferably organic (it’s nice to know what your offal has been up to) – the amount will depend on how much you like the taste of chicken liver!
1/2 bottle of full-bodied red wine
2 onions, chopped
2 small carrots, finely chopped
1 stick of celery, finely chopped
bundle of fresh thyme
2 fresh bay leaves
500ml beef stock (Heston’s cheaty Waitrose stuff is excellent)
2 tablespoons tomato paste (umami!)
1 x 400g can plum tomatoes
good sploosh of worcestershire sauce (more umami!!)
And if you want even more umami, add some umami paste / umami powder

papardelle/tagliatelle/spaghetti to serve – always dried, ideally a decent brand, never supermarket fresh crap

The way I do this is to sweat off the onions, carrots, celery and garlic – as I chop them – in that order – in the pressure cooker with a little vegetable oil. When softened, remove from the pan and into a bowl. Next, fry off the mince in stages over a very high heat, trying to get as much colour on the mince as possible. Remove from pan. Deglaze the pan with the red wine and reduce by half. Then add all the cooked ingredients and the rest of the ingredients to the pressure cooker, cover, bring to high pressure and cook for 30 minutes. If the sauce is too runny, strain the liquid into a smaller pan and boil rapidly until the sauce reaches the desired consistency, and add back to the meat. Pick out the bay leaves and thyme if you are posh.

As with all such things this is better the next day, and even better the day after. This will make enough for at least 10 servings, so I like to freeze what I don’t use.

Just a placeholder page for places I want to visit but haven’t got around to yet:

• Sushi Passion: a small sushi place in Birmingham Indoor Market
• The Karczma: billed as a traditional Polish restaurant, near Moor Street
• The King and Thai: supposed to be a good Thai restaurant doing properly hot Thai food in Broseley, Shropshire
• The Vine: near the Hawthorns, supposed to do good Indian BBQ, according to Dom Clarke (alternative: The Sportsman, suggested by Gary Weir)
• The Wildmoor Oak: Bromsgrove, for jerk chicken
• The Hop Pole: Bewdley, supposed to be a good food pub.

The whole calendar has been hijacked by various causes, some worthier than others. You’ve missed “Farmhouse Breakfast Week” (22-28th January) and already in February there’s been “Safer Internet Day” (wear a condom whilst browsing?). Next week there’s the quite thrilling “Fair Trade Fortnight” which should sort lots of things out no doubt.

Do I care? Not normally – and I also wouldn’t care about National Chip Week, even though I like chips and I encourage them in my own special way, were it not for the fact that my favourite fish and chip venue – the Black Country Living Museum – tweeted rather enigmatically that they were frying “red-battered chips” this week in celebration.

What are red-battered chips and more importantly why haven’t I heard of them until now? Google is no help. But a bit of incidental conversation on Twitter about West Midlands specialties (balti, pork pies, pork scratchings, faggots & peas, groaty pudding, Fenky Jane’s caribbean patties since you ask) also threw up orange battered chips. Sounds very similar. Apparently these are a Black Country specialty, the origins of which are a source of great controversy.

But – what are they? Well they are simply battered chips. Etymologists amongst you will not be surprised to find out that they are orange. Those who have eaten food, or observed teenagers in the Black Country won’t be surprised to find out this is achieved by adding tartrazine to the batter.

So what of the red battered chips? Well, with today’s beautiful spring-like weather I decided to go and find out for myself. Turns out Black Country museum on a weekday in February isn’t very busy, and I was first in line at Hobbs & Son.

“Why are they called red-battered chips not orange?” I enquired, trying to sound like I didn’t really have a middle-class Southern accent. “Because they are red”. Mystery solved. In they went to the fryer with a hunk of cod and I waited outside in the glorious winter-into-spring sun for them to be ready …

They were blimming lovely. Bostin’. Black Country museum fish and chips are already the best ever, cooked to order in beef dripping with quite the best crispy flavourful batter and perfectly steamed fish within. So adding some extra batter to the chips as well as a generous helping of crispies tucked in the bottom of the cone just serves to make the whole experience more decadent.

National Chip week runs until 26th February – in case you give a shit.

I’ve been really enjoying using my pressure cooker of late. Slow cooked dishes which have previously been out of reach of work-night dinners are now in reach. The pressure cooker miraculously transforms tough cuts like brisket, pork and lamb shoulder into melting goodness in a manner of minutes rather than hours. I made a cracking lamb and spinach curry in about twenty minutes the other day. Lap uses his for pork carnitas and beef rendang. I thought I’d use this trick to make one of my favourites – Lancashire hotpot. Often meaty neck bones are suggested for this dish but I find these a bit hard to get hold of, but I can get lamb shoulder which has the requisite properties to render gelatinous goodness into the sauce. So I figured I’d cook down the shoulder in the pressure cooker, shred the meat from the bone and then assemble the hotpot. This brings the total cooking time for this dish down to a realistic two hours. I reckon it’d be double with a conventional braise.

If you are interested in experimenting with pressure cooking, I’d suggest this excellent site – hip pressure cooking which has a useful page on cooking times and some handy tips and tricks.

1/2 lamb shoulder
1 glass red wine
1 onion, sliced
2 carrots, chunked
1 tablespoon flour
400ml good beef stock (I tend to use the Heston stuff from Waitrose)
bay leaf, sprig of rosemary and thyme
floury maincrop potatoes (Maris Piper, King Edwards* see comments) – number will depend on the area of your cooking pot
good slug of anchovy essence

Brown lamb shoulder in a hot pan (my pressure cooker isn’t big enough for a shoulder).

In the open pressure cooker fry the onion and carrots in some oil until giving. Add the herbs and flour. Add wine and reduce by half. Add the stock and anchovy essence, reduce a little. Add the lamb shoulder whole. Cook in pressure cooker for about 35-40 minutes at 15 psi (high pressure) and use the slow release method. Check the lamb is tender, otherwise go again for 10 more minutes. Remove the shoulder from the sauce and leave until it’s cooled enough to handle. Use your hands to rip it into shreds, it should be tender enough (gloves are handy here). Pour the sauce into a bowl and let the fat settle on the top. Skim the fat off but reserve it for later. Season the sauce (careful as the anchovy essence is quite salty). Cut potatoes into thickish slices (about one pound coin thickness) for the base. Add some lamb dripping to a nice oven-proof pot. Then layer the thickly sliced potatoes on the bottom of the pot. Make a couple of layers if you like lots of potatoes in your hotpot. Layer over the shredded lamb shoulder and pour over the sauce so it just covers the meat (removing the herbs at the same time). Cut more potatoes into very thin slices for the top. I use a mandoline. Overlap them neatly in several layers. Add a little more lamb dripping to serve as a glaze. Cook in oven at 200 degrees covered loosely with foil for 1 hour and then remove foil and brown the top until it looks really appetising.

Serve with pickled vegetables. Red cabbage is traditional, but I used turnips and carrots which worked well.