Cili padi? I don't know what the English name is.
Might be Bird's Eye Chillis?
So, I cooked a 'bolognese' sauce last night, using 'quorn' instead of beef mince, and it seemed to go down quite well.
Here's how it went:
(this is in no way affiliated with Bologna, Italy, or anything of the sort, but I'll call it bolognese cos it's what I want to call it)
Serves 4 -5Glug of olive oil
Knob of butter
2 medium onions (roughly chopped)
3 cloves garlic (finely sliced)
3 or 4 carrots, cubed or sliced in 1cm (1/2”) bits.
200g (1/2 lb) mushrooms, finely sliced.
300ml (1/2 pint) Tomato Passata (sieved tomatoes)
450g (1lb) can of chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp Tomato puree
Lemon juice
Red wine vinegar
Pinch sugar
Selection of herbs (I used dried thyme, sage, rosemary, oregano, basil)
Bag of Quorn (meat substitute) mince (454g)
Dried Pasta (100g dry weight (approx 1/4lb) per person)
Slug some oil in a big pan on a stove. Get it hot, then turn the heat down to low. Throw the onions in and stir a bit, listen to them sizzle. Give them 5 or 10 minutes to go nice and golden and soft under a gentle heat.
If you don’t stir them they might go a bit brown. As long as they don’t go black this shouldn’t be an issue. After 5 minutes or so, throw the garlic in, and stir.
Keep an eye on the pan, and a lower heat is a bit more important now as you don’t want to burn the garlic.
After a couple more minutes your crisp onions should now be golden and limp. Throw in the tomato puree and give it all a good mix round. Fry gently for a minute. Throw in the carrots, stir round to coat with the goodness in the pan. Cook (stirring occasionally) for 5 minutes or so.
Now add the chopped mushrooms. At this point add the butter, and season with black pepper and a teaspoons worth of all the different dried herbs (not sure you get a lot of flavour out of these, so don’t worry too much about overdoing it here).
Then do a bit more stirring, coating the mushrooms and carrots with all the lovely juices of the onions, tomato paste, and generous seasoning. Cook this for five minutes.
Now throw in the Passata and a tin of chopped tomatoes, along with a good squeeze of lemon juice (about as much as you might get from half a lemon), with a quick glug of red wine vinegar. Add a couple of hundred ml of water (1/3 pint) to get to the required thickness of sauce (go a little bit thin at this point, it will thicken a little).
Stir this all round, and taste.
If you live in the UK (like me) and have inferior tomatoes, you might need to throw in some sugar to try and sweeten it up. About a teaspoon worth could be about right. Add little bits at a time, and taste. Also season with further additions of sea salt and black pepper. Stir and taste, then when you think you are pretty close throw in the bag of quorn.
This will take twelve minutes to cook so this is the right time to get the pasta on in a big pan of boiling water.
After a further twelve minutes, take the heat off the ‘stew’ pan, and you should probably have cooked your pasta by now, so drain this in a colander over the sink.
Serve in big round bowls, pasta first with the stewed concoction on top. Add generous lashings of shaved parmesan and cracked black pepper if required.
Wear a bib.
Enjoy!