More Necessity, More Invention - or how to Wing It!

Without a doubt, pasta is one of the best thing to make when tummies are rumbling and the grocery provisions are sparse. Personally, I prefer making pasta when I have ALL my required ingredients rather than having to wing it. But really, what can you do when your doe eyed children ask you to make Pasta and you haven't got the requisite ingredients and its too late to go to the store coz they are just too darned hungry?

That seems to happen fairly often in my house! I guess the kids just love pasta. After all, what kid doesn't - not to mention adults! I love my pasta too, so maybe that's where my kids get it from.

Anyway, the decision to have pasta had been made by the kids and no amount of alternative suggestions seemed to work. They wanted their pasta. Worse, they wanted a meat sauce pasta and as luck would have it - there were no tomatoes in the house!! Never mind, I thought, lets check the fridge and see what we have.

Ahhh... Celery! That's always good. One carrot, also good. Tomato sauce - no, no that's not so good - Tomato Paste yes but not Tomato Sauce. Well, mince, carrot and celery would make for a pretty decent pasta. (Regular readers of this blog would know that I LOVE mushrooms in my pasta sauce and the absence of which means the pasta sauce is somehow incomplete).

But what to do for a sauce? I tossed up with making a creamy meat sauce but wasn't quite sure how it would go with loads of mince. The fridge was still open and my beady little eyes spied the bottle of prune juice! Aha! That would do the trick!




So what I did was to first fry the meat, celery and carrots. Then I made a roux (flour cooked in butter) and then added some milk and the prune juice to it. This made a lovely meaty sauce that was very hearty and tasty.

This is what I did:

1 carrot
1 celery
3 cloves garlic
2 tsp oregano
350g Minced Beef
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
300 ml milk
100 ml prune juice
Salt
Pepper

Method
Chop the carrot, celery and garlic. Fry the garlic and then add in the beef and cook well. Add in the carrots and celery and cook till tender. In a separate sauce pan make the roux by melting the butter and then adding the flour. Cook well and then pour in the milk mixing well till smooht. Bring to the boil and then add in the prune juice and season with salt and pepper.
Pour the sauce into the beef mix and allow to simmer.




I served this with Penne and the kids were delighted at how good the pasta tasted and how fast I was able to whip it up!

I've also sent this in as an entry for Presto Pasta Nights which has a brand new home now Head on over there to see the other amazing entries and to get more information on how to enter yourself!

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