In which Heston is invited to a fight, anytime, anyplace

At the market on Sunday someone was cooking bolognese sauce at the pasta stall. Slow-cooked in red wine, she said, offering me a taste. I don't taste stuff at markets unless there's a vague chance I'm going to buy something, which is a bizarre new rule of etiquette that I seem to have adopted for myself, and I had no cash that day. But the smell was enough. I wanted bolognese.

I research these things, I'm thorough. Read a bunch of recipes and then deliberately ignored all of them. The vast majority of bolognese recipes, I am still astounded to note, don't specify red wine. Many of them insist on white wine, but I don't care what Dr B says, this is a bolognese and it's having red wine in it. To do else would be madness.

Celery is another one of those things. Apparently you need celery to make a soffrito. I've never eaten celery and I'm not about to start now. I did consider buying some today, but I'm not about to buy a gigantic pack of the stuff in order to add a tiny amount of it to a soffrito. Until celery is available in individual sticks I shall remain unabashedly free of its pernicious apiceatic influence.

So. Read a bunch of recipes, ignored all of them. Ended up with this:

( May contain images too saucy for those of a delicate nature )

And lo, it was delicious.

(There was also whisky, which it's possible you may determine from the content of this post.)

Tomorrow: minced-meat pies. Rowr.