Tagliatelle With Beef And Red Wine Ragu
This is a Lindsey Bareham recipe that I did for supper yesterday. I’d decided to do it in the morning, but when Waitrose were selling 400g packs of diced braising steak for just £2.25, I couldn’t resist making two portions of the ragu, with one for supper and one for the freezer.
I started by taking the whole pack of diced braising steak, which I seasoned and browned it in a couple of tablespoons of hot oil in my Le Creuset shallow casserole.
Browning The Diced Steak
The meat was then scooped out of the casserole and then 100g each of finely chopped onion and celery, together with some garlic, a tsp of thyme and a pinch of chilli flakes were then gently softened in the meat juices and tossed for five minutes.
Cooking The Onion, Celery And Spices
I then took 100g of finely chopped chestnut mushrooms and added them to the pan. I cooked this until it was all dark and juicy.
Cooking The Mushrooms
I then chopped the meat and added this to the pan.
150 ml of red wine was added and it was allowed to bubble up for a few minutes, before stirring in a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes.
It was then baked in the oven for 60 minutes at 160°C.
I served it with some of Carluccio’s gluten-free pasta.
Tagliatelle With Beef And Red Wine Ragu
My one mistake was perhaps not to put in quite enough wine, so it was perhaps a tad dry.
I shall make this again, I see the diced steak on offer at Waitrose. I know I don’t need to economise, but it shows you can make a delicious meal for two with £2.25 of steak, an onion, some celery, a tin of tomatoes, some spices and some wine.
This recipe also shows the usefullness of my shallow casserole. It is definitely something that I don’t regret buying.
This Will Be Great Fun!
I’ve just seen this Panono camera ball demonstrated on the Click segment of BBC Breakfast for today. You can probably find it on this page.
At the moment, it’s only a prototype, but my devious mind has already thought of several useful applications of the technology. At the moment the price looks to be several hundred euros, but one that was the size of a cricket ball, that is say just £200 would be wonderful toy for people of all ages.
It’s Not Their Money It’s Mine!
I haven’t used large amounts of cash for years, but I did a couple of times years ago, when I needed to buy a car, or in one case a truck privately.
However, I do think HSBC are being a bit heavy handed in this story from the BBC. Here’s the reaction of an HSBC customer, when he tried to withdraw £10,000.
Mr Cotton cannot understand HSBC’s attitude: “I’ve been banking in that bank for 28 years. They all know me in there. You shouldn’t have to explain to your bank why you want that money. It’s not theirs, it’s yours.”
Strangely, you’re probably better off using a peer-to-peer lender as an instant access account, as I do. If I needed £10,000 on say the 10th March, I could probably get it in returns from my Zopa account with little difficulty. But I’d have to plan what I was doing. On the other hand my credit raqting is good enough to borrow it from the sdame source, if I needed it urgently.
As peer-to-peer lenders get bigger, more common and flexible, we’ll see all sorts of innovative ways to manage our money.
Banks will probably die in their numbers, as they are incapable of innovation. I like the quote of Paul Volcker, who was once chairman of the Federal Reserve.
ATMs were banking’s only useful technological innovation in the last 30 years.
He is so right.
The Anonymous Widower 