Bolognese Sauce in the Pressure Cooker

A weekday night mainstay. Pasta with Bolognese sauce.

Cooked in the pressure cooker, it is easy to quickly put together a big batch of the sauce, which can then be portioned out into tubs and frozen.

Minced beef is the traditional meat used, but minced pork also makes a good sauce.

Sweet and Sour Mussels

So I decided to try something different for tea tonight, and bought some pre-cooked pre-shelled mussel meat.

I adapted a recipe for Sweet and Sour White Fish from my copy of Wei Chuan Chinese Seafood to cook them.

This is a bit involved, so cook the rice in a rice cooker, or use pre-cooked rice to accompany it rather than try to juggle cooking rice in a pan as well.



First mix the following in a bowl and let marinate in the fridge whilst you prepare the other ingredients.

• 250g cooked shelled mussels
• 1 tbsp sherry
• 1/2 tsp salt

Measure rice and water into the rice cooker and switch on to cook.

Next, mix the following in another bowl to form the batter, and set on one side to rest.

• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup cornflour
• 1/4 cup water

Now, mix the following in a mug to form the sauce mixture.

• 5 tbsp lemon juice or vinegar
• 5 tbsp water
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 5 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tbsp cornflour

Prepare the vegetables.

• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 green pepper
• a few broccoli florets

Peel and coarsely chop onion.
Peel and slice carrot.
De-seed pepper and cut into pieces.
Blanch broccoli florets in boiling water and drain.
 
Drain the marinated mussels and mix into the batter.
Heat a deep fat fryer and deep fry the battered mussels until golden, then drain on absorbent paper.

Now to assemble the final dish.

Heat a couple of tbsp of oil in a wok and stir-fry the vegetables for a few minutes until lightly cooked.
Stir the mug of sauce mix and then pour it over the vegetables in the wok.
Continue to stir-fry it all as the sauce mixture boils and thickens.
Add the fried mussels and toss to coat evenly in the sauce.

Serve immediately with boiled rice.


My daughter said that the mussels weren't completely horrible but she didn't like them. Hohum.

Pumpkin Pie

It's just gone Hallowe'en, and I had bought two pumpkins - one to make into a lantern and one to bake pumpkin pie with.

The lantern went down a storm with the local kids, but I didn't have time to make pumpkin pie from the other one until today.

My cooking pumpkin was quite large, and I ended up getting two pies' worth of filling from it.