This sauce is ideal for spaghetti, but can be used with any kind of pasta - great for Lasagne as well. This is not a true bolognese, but quite a variation - but very tasty nevetheless! I tend to prepare huge amounts and freeze the stuff in individual portions. I've carefully measured the ingredients and played around with different amounts and found the amounts below to be the best - but please feel free to modify! This will give you a not too salty bolognese with a very slight sharpness to it - my kids eat it as well. If you like your food hot, double the amount of Sambal Oelek. Also, if you like more garlic in your spag bol, feed free to modify the amount.

Ingredients for the sauce (serves six)

• 500g beef mince
• 650g onions
• 4 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
• 200g tomato concentrate
• 8 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt (as people started moaning about the amount of salt used - do me a favour, add up the weight of all ingredients to the sauce and then calculate the salt content per 150g serving ... )
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 2 tablespoons oregano
• two cloves of garlic
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• one glass (125ml) red wine
• one splash of worcester sauce
• 1 teaspoon sambal oelek (hot chilli)

Ingredients for the spaghetti (serves six)

• 1 kg spaghetti (decent stuff such as Barilla, De Cecco, etc.)
• 7 liters water
• two tablespoons olive oil
• one teaspoon salt
• two tablespoons butter
• freshly chopped basil
• freshly grated Reggiano parmesan cheese

Preparation

Chop the onions - not too finely. Press the garlic. Pour olive oil into a large saucepan, add the onions and fry them in the olive oil until they change colour. Now crumble the mince into the onions and fry it until it is completely done (no red bits left). Continue frying the mince and the onions while styrring to let some of the water that has accumulated evaporate. When the mince is nice and crumbly, pour in the red wine.

Now add the tomatoes, the tomato concentrate, the honey and the spices. Let the whole lot simmer for an hour with no lid on the saucepan - we want the sauce to reduce to get rid of some of the water - that will make it tastier.

Preparing pasta

Allow roughly 200g of pasta per head (for the very hungry) - a normal portion is around 150g. Boil a lot of water (1 liter per 100g), add some olive oil and salt. When the water is boiling, add the pasta. I normally use a timer to keep track of the cooking time (check the pasta package) - tends to be 10 - 12 minutes for spaghetti. Check at the lower end of the cooking time to see if they are "al dente". Now put out the whole lot into a colander which you have placed in your sink. Turn on the cold water and rinse the spaghetti under the water (while they are still in the colander). Put the saucepan back onto your hob and add 2 tablespoons of butter. Melt the butter. Put the pasta back into the saucepan and heat it up while turning it until it's hot. The pasta will taste great, not stick together and be just right!